The Texas Supreme Court docket late Friday night time allowed a 1925 regulation banning abortion to take impact, overturning a decrease courtroom ruling that had quickly blocked it.

The choice was the most recent in a sequence of authorized battles throughout the nation following the Supreme Court docket ruling on June 24 that overturned Roe v. Wade, a half-century-old ruling that had established a nationwide constitutional proper to an abortion.

In Texas, that meant a 1925 regulation written earlier than Roe, which had banned abortions and punished those that carried out them with potential imprisonment, mechanically got here into impact, mentioned Ken Paxton, the state’s legal professional normal. Although not enforced after the 1973 Supreme Court docket ruling on Roe, it had nonetheless remained on the books.

That ban was quickly blocked by a Harris County decide after abortion clinics sued for a keep, arguing that it had successfully been repealed after the landmark Roe ruling.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Paxton referred to as the reversal of the keep a “pro-life victory!” on Twitter.

“Our state’s pre-Roe statutes banning abortion in Texas are 100% good regulation. Litigation continues, however I’ll hold profitable for Texas’ unborn infants,” he mentioned.

The state Supreme Court docket resolution on Friday partially overruled the choice of the decrease district courtroom. Either side will proceed to argue their case involving the outdated regulation on July 12 in entrance of that district courtroom. The lifting of the freeze didn’t permit for felony enforcement of the ban, mentioned the American Civil Liberties Union in a information launch. The group is representing abortion clinics within the authorized struggle.

“Extremist politicians are on a campaign to power Texans into being pregnant and childbirth towards their will, irrespective of how devastating the implications,” mentioned Julia Kaye, an legal professional with the A.C.L.U. Reproductive Freedom Challenge.

Even earlier than the overturning of Roe, a regulation handed final 12 months in Texas had allowed abortions solely as much as about six weeks of being pregnant. And when the Roe resolution was overturned, a “set off ban” was activated that can ban all abortions in Texas from the second of fertilization, with uncommon exceptions together with to save lots of the lifetime of the mom. That regulation goes into impact on the finish of July.

Texas is one in all a number of states the place abortion-rights teams have rapidly taken their marketing campaign to the courts, aiming to dam or delay abortion restrictions and bans from going into impact. By Friday, that they had succeeded in Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana and Florida.