FiveThirtyEight Article Rating

Why The Supreme Court Might Overturn Texas's Abortion Law

Nov 01, 2021 View Original Article
  • Bias Rating

    -88% Very Liberal

  • Reliability

    N/AN/A

  • Policy Leaning

    94% Very Conservative

  • Politician Portrayal

    32% Negative

Bias Score Analysis

The A.I. bias rating includes policy and politician portrayal leanings based on the author’s tone found in the article using machine learning. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral.

Sentiments

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Bias Meter

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : At its core, the Texas law is a solution to a dilemma that anti-abortion advocates have struggled with for years.
55% : And the conservative justices' willingness to let that happen could signal that anti-abortion advocates are about to win a much bigger victory -- even if the Texas law doesn't ultimately survive.
48% : That approach could extend far beyond abortion and be used with other constitutional rights. "
47% : And in that sense, whatever happens next, anti-abortion advocates in the state have already scored a big victory.
44% : But by making individuals responsible for enforcement, Texas changed the game -- leaving abortion providers with no one to sue, and no obvious way for the federal courts to intervene.
44% : And then, in early December, they'll weigh another abortion restriction -- a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which could give them the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.
43% : So the back-and-forth over the Texas law might be an unwelcome distraction for the conservative justices, who didn't need another chance to reconsider whether abortion is constitutional.
42% : And, she added, there are cleaner ways to overturn or limit Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion -- including a case involving a more straightforward Mississippi law that will be heard by the court in December.
41% : While a majority of justices on the Supreme Court may be willing to reconsider the constitutional right to abortion, giving states the power to pass laws like Texas's might be a bridge too far even for the court's conservatives.
40% : Plenty of other states have already passed laws restricting abortion after six weeks, or banning it outright.
40% : And it was successful, at least provisionally, since the law is in effect in Texas and, as a result, abortion is currently virtually impossible to obtain in the state.
40% : By allowing the restriction to go into effect, the Supreme Court permitted the state to effectively ban abortion, forcing women to flood neighboring states to obtain the procedure.
37% : The Texas law's innovation was how it banned abortion: Private citizens who successfully sue an individual for helping a woman get a prohibited abortion are eligible for a $10,000 reward, putting responsibility for enforcing the law in the hands of vigilante plaintiffs -- and, crucially, taking it out of the hands of state officials, like prosecutors.
34% : Increasingly, Republican-controlled state legislatures have been willing to pass laws -- like a six-week ban on abortion -- that openly violate Roe.
33% : What Texas did wasn't noteworthy because of at what stage it banned abortion.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.

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