Here is a link to a recent decision by the 5th Circuit invalidating a Texas law limiting D & E abortions. The vote was 2-1. Judge Willett wrote an impassioned dissent. Texas is likely to continue to defend the law; the most likely next step would be for the state to ask the full 5th Circuit to rehear the case en banc.
Here is quote from Judge Willett’s dissent:
“The State of Texas is not seeking to ban this grisly procedure. But Texas does seek to unbrutalize it, requiring that an abortion doctor not dismember a living unborn child. SB8 does not proscribe D&E; it prescribes more humane D&E, one that substitutes merciful deaths for horrific ones. Few would disagree that tearing the limbs off a live fetus until it dies is more barbaric than tearing the limbs off a dead fetus, or injecting the fetus with a lethal substance first. Under SB8, developing human life must be extinguished before it is extracted, thus granting a measure of mercy and dignity to the unborn child’s final moments. As explained below, there is nothing unconstitutional about that.
Respectfully, I dissent.”
Richard Myers
Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues.
Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366
