Last week, just after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the Texas Heartbeat Act — a decision that has since been reversed by the Fifth Circuit — Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post introduced her column on the topic with this falsehood: “The preliminary injunction from a federal district court Wednesday blocking the enforcement of Texas’s abortion bounty law was a rare win for the Justice Department and abortion rights groups.” (Emphasis added.)
The idea that anyone in America, right or left, pro- or anti-abortion, would think this was “a rare win” is almost unimaginable. The entire reason Roe v. Wade has caused such havoc and remained unsettled for decades is precisely its effect on lower courts, requiring judges to rule against states that attempt to regulate abortion.
Nearly every single lawsuit from abortion providers or advocacy groups challenging a pro-life state law of nearly any kind finds success in court. For the most part, states pass pro-life laws because they hope one will serve as a vehicle to overturn Roe, or they pass a “trigger law” that will take effect in the event that Roe is overturned, or they pass one of the few types of marginal abortion restrictions that can sometimes find favor with a court, such as a parental-notification law or a requirement that doctors notify women of the chance to view an ultrasound (both of these types of laws also draw the legal fire of abortion-advocacy groups and providers).
Where Jen Rubin got the idea that abortion-rights groups rarely win in court, I have no idea. Either she’s ignoring demonstrable contrary facts because it makes her case more appealing, or she has even less of a clue than I thought.