Texas just enacted the strictest anti-abortion law in the country. Senate Bill 8, which went into effect at midnight on Sept. 1, effectively bans abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy, before most people who can give birth know they’re pregnant. One harrowing feature of the bill is that it deputizes private citizens as vigilante enforcers of the law, enabling them to sue anyone they believe to have “aided or abetted” someone getting an abortion after six weeks.

On Wednesday night, just before midnight, the US Supreme Court declined to block the law based on an emergency application for a writ of injunction filed by abortion rights groups, securing a major victory for anti-choice conservatives. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with writer and longtime TRNN contributor Molly Shah about the implications of Senate Bill 8 and how it fits into the larger conservative onslaught on abortion rights.

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The Texas abortion ban is even more extreme than you think