A team of Texas condition Dwelling lawmakers identified as the Texas Freedom Caucus despatched a letter to a law company in Dallas past week threatening “consequences” more than the firm’s determination to reimburse staff members for the prices of out-of-condition vacation to acquire an abortion.
The lawmakers’ missive, sent and posted on its internet site on July 7, accused the company, Sidley Austin LLP, of becoming “complicit in illegal abortions” in Texas that were allegedly done just before and just after the Supreme Court docket issued its Dobbs ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade.
“It has arrive to our interest that Sidley Austin has resolved to reimburse the travel costs of staff members who leave Texas to murder their unborn little ones,” state Rep. Mayes Middleton (R), the chair of the Texas Independence Caucus, wrote in the email to Sidley Austin, which is based mostly in Chicago but has an office environment in Dallas. “We are producing to notify you of the consequences that you and your colleagues will face for these steps.”
Middleton claimed that the law organization was “exposing by itself and just about every of its associates to felony legal prosecution and disbarment,” citing Texas’ anti-abortion legislation from 1925 that the point out can now enforce immediately after the Supreme Court struck down Roe past thirty day period.
“We will also be introducing legislation subsequent session that will impose more civil and legal sanctions on regulation firms that pay back for abortions or abortion travel,” Middleton warned.
The new legislation, in accordance to the letter, will criminalize any Texas company’s reimbursement of “elective abortions” or “abortion-linked fees — regardless of where by the abortion happens, and no matter of the law in the jurisdiction wherever the abortion happens.”
It will also involve the Condition Bar of Texas to disbar any lawyer who violates the states’ ban on abortion, Middleton warned.
The email involved a CC to Texas Legal professional General Ken Paxton (R), who has sworn to implement the state’s abortion constraints in the wake of the Supreme Court’s strikedown of Roe.
The Texas Independence Caucus’ threat marks the subsequent frontier in the GOP’s war on reproductive legal rights: Policing throughout condition traces and barring individuals from accessing abortions in other states, primarily as organizations like Sidley Austin and others set up reimbursement policies for out-of-point out abortion access.
Go through the letter down below:
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