A Texas law effectively banning an abortion procedure commonly employed during second-trimester pregnancies in the United States was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 18, reversing a ruling last year by a three-judge panel of the same court.
The 2017 law, which imposes civil and criminal penalties on physicians who perform dilation and evacuation abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy without first ensuring that the unborn child doesn’t have a detectable fetal heartbeat, has never been enforced.
