Slate: “On Wednesday night [Oct. 6], U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman blocked S.B. 8, Texas’ six-week abortion ban, which sought to evade judicial review by empowering bounty hunters to sue abortion providers and anyone who “abets” them. Pitman’s 113-page opinion is a rebuke to the Supreme Court’s one-paragraph, back-of-the envelope order refusing to halt the law on Sept. 1, after it had already gone into effect. Pitman, who heard lengthy oral arguments in this case last Friday, painstakingly explains why federal courts must prohibit the Texas judiciary from entertaining suits by anti-abortion vigilantes. In so doing, he answers the many “complex and novel” questions that SCOTUS found too befuddling to address last month when it declined to enjoin the law. Pitman also illuminates the rolling crisis for Texans who remain in dire need of abortion care, depicting the harrowing consequences of the ban over the last five weeks. Higher courts may well reverse Pitman’s decision, but they will have a difficult time pointing to a flaw in his meticulous and fact-based opinion.”