A doctor in Texas who admitted in an op-ed that he willingly performed an abortion, violating Texas’ new pro-life law, has been sued by two disbarred attorneys.
As reported by The New York Times, a “man in Arkansas and another in Illinois on Monday filed what appeared to be the first legal actions under a strict new abortion law in Texas that is enforced by ordinary citizens, regardless of where they live.”
According to his complaint, the man from Arkansas, Oscar Stilley, is “a disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer” who is “currently on home confinement…serving the 12 year of a 15 year federal sentence on utterly fraudulent federal charges of ‘tax evasion’ and ‘conspiracy.’”
Stilley told the Times he is “not pro-life” and said, “The thing that I’m trying to vindicate here is the law. We pride ourselves on being a nation of laws. What’s the law?”
The other person who filed a lawsuit against the doctor is Felipe N. Gomez, another disbarred lawyer.
According to local outlet KSAT, “Gomez filed the lawsuit pro se, identifying himself as a ‘Pro Choice plaintiff’ and an Illinois resident. In the court filing, Gomez asks the judge to order the law is unconstitutional and violates Roe v. Wade.”
The doctor, Alan Braid, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he said that he purposefully performed an illegal abortion, one that goes against the state’s new pro-life law, which bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy or when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
Braid, a San Antonio OB/GYN, wrote that it was “1972 all over again” for him after the new Texas law was passed, which led him to perform an abortion on a woman who was “beyond the state’s new limit.” He argued that he “acted because [he] had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.”
As The Daily Wire reported, Braid was also sure to include anecdotal pieces of information about his patients who have sought abortions, saying the majority of them are mothers, with most women falling between the ages of 18 and 30. He added that several times a month, a woman tells the abortion provider that she has been raped, and more often than not, doesn’t report the crime to the police.
“I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but it’s something I believe in strongly. Represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, my clinics are among the plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit to stop S.B. 8.,” the doctor wrote, adding that he has daughters, granddaughters, and nieces and believes abortion is “an essential part of health care.”
John Seago, the legislative director for Texas Right to Life, told The Daily Wire the lawsuits “are obviously self-serving.” He said, “these are not legitimate efforts from the pro-life movement to save lives,” adding that he thinks they will be quickly dismissed.
Even though the lawsuits are suing a doctor who performed an abortion, The Daily Wire has learned that pro-life groups aren’t in widespread favor of them. Instead, many see the legal actions as a potential way to undermine the law and find potential loopholes.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, told The Daily Wire the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against Braid support abortion and are going to try to overturn the law.
She added, however, that other states could try to pass similar “heartbeat” laws with the same approach as Texas.
She thinks going after abortionists with a civil penalty “is actually going to be very effective because many of these abortionists are in it for the money, so if they are going to be charged with a $10,000 fee for every abortion they do, it’ll hit them in the pocket book and it’s not worth it.”