Texas upends legal landscape with Supreme Court decision on abortion ban

Washington — Anti-abortion rights groups are cheering a decision from the Supreme Court late Wednesday to allow a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to remain in effect, emboldening other states to follow suit with similar measures that deputize private citizens to enforce the law.

The novel mechanism for enforcing the abortion measure in Texas, the nation's most restrictive, was at the crux of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to allow the law to remain in effect, as the conservative majority said abortion providers seeking to block the law did not meet their burden with the "complex and novel" procedural questions presented with their request. "Anti-abortion legislatures are just watching what happens in Texas, and if Texas gets away with this, absolutely they're going to start passing them all over the country," Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, told CBS News.