{"id":591,"date":"2022-03-02T11:52:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T16:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/?page_id=591"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:39","slug":"the-texas-heartbeat-act-how-private-citizens-are-given-the-power-to-violate-a-womans-right-to-privacy-through-an-unusual-enforcement-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/online\/volume-xxiii-online\/the-texas-heartbeat-act-how-private-citizens-are-given-the-power-to-violate-a-womans-right-to-privacy-through-an-unusual-enforcement-mechanism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Texas Heartbeat Act: How Private Citizens are Given the Power to Violate a Woman&#8217;s Right to Privacy Through an Unusual Enforcement Mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly fifty years ago, the Supreme Court held that a woman\u2019s \u201cdecision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy\u201d is a fundamental right to which she is guaranteed privacy. The Texas Heartbeat Act (the \u201cAct\u201d) threatens to violate this right to privacy through its \u201cunusual\u201d and novel enforcement mechanism. Unlike other anti-abortion laws, in which the government is the enforcer, the Act cedes enforcement power to private citizens. Under the Act, private citizens are allowed and encouraged to invade the private life of pregnant women and sue any person or organization who helps her get an abortion.\u00a0 If the private citizen claimant is successful, they can collect thousands of dollars in damages. Some other states, inspired by the creativity of the Act\u2019s novel enforcement mechanism and determined to functionally overturn Roe, have begun drafting their own copycat anti-abortion laws &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2021\/11\/The-Texas-Heartbeat-Act-...-by-Meredith-Johnson.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly fifty years ago, the Supreme Court held that a woman\u2019s \u201cdecision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy\u201d is a fundamental right to which she is guaranteed privacy. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4294,"featured_media":0,"parent":941,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-591","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/591\/revisions\/592"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}