WASHINGTON: The conservative-leaning US Supreme Court refused on Friday to block a Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks, but left the door open for abortion providers to challenge the law in lower courts.

Anti-abortion groups welcomed the ruling, which did not address the constitutionality of the Texas law, while abortion rights advocates expressed concern.

“Today’s decision is not okay,“ said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates the Texas abortion clinics that filed suit against the law. “It is unjust, cruel, and inhumane.”

President Joe Biden said he was “very concerned” that the Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to stand and reiterated his commitment to abortion rights.

“I will always stand with women to protect and defend their long-recognized, constitutional right,“ the president said in a statement.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called it a “huge win” while Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, welcomed the fact that the Texas law will remain in force for now.

“We celebrate that the Texas Heartbeat Act will remain in effect, saving the lives of unborn children and protecting mothers while litigation continues in lower courts,“ Dannenfelser said in a statement.

The Texas ruling comes 10 days after the conservative majority on the court indicated in another case that they may be inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that held that access to abortion is a constitutional right.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on December 1 about a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks, and the court’s conservative wing -- which includes three justices nominated by Donald Trump -- appeared ready to uphold the law and perhaps even go further and overturn Roe.

The court is to render a decision in the Mississippi case by June.

‘Chilling effect’

The Texas law bans abortion after six weeks, when a heartbeat can be detected but before many women even know they are pregnant, and is the most restrictive law passed in the United States since abortion was made a constitutional right nearly five decades ago.

Without ruling on the merits of the Texas law, eight of the nine justices on the court agreed that lawsuits filed by abortion providers against the law may proceed in federal court. Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, sided with the three liberal justices in expressing concerns about the Texas law and the way it has been framed to avoid judicial review.

“Given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the District Court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay,“ Roberts wrote.

“The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”

Laws restricting abortion have been passed in multiple Republican-led states but struck down by the courts for violating Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, typically around 22 to 24 weeks.

Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8) differs from other efforts in that it attempts to insulate the state by giving members of the public the right to sue doctors who perform abortions -- or anyone who helps facilitate them -- once a heartbeat in the womb is detected.

They can be rewarded with $10,000 for initiating civil suits that land in court, prompting criticism that the state is encouraging people to take the law into their own hands.

Many clinics in Texas -- fearful of potentially ruinous lawsuits -- have closed their doors, and the number of abortions in the state fell to 2,100 in September from 4,300 a year earlier, according to a University of Texas study.

‘Madness’

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by the other two liberal justices, said the court should have stepped in and blocked the Texas law.

“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before SB8 first went into effect,“ Sotomayor wrote. “It failed to do so then, and it fails again today.”

“The law has threatened abortion care providers with the prospect of essentially unlimited suits for damages, brought anywhere in Texas by private bounty hunters,“ she said.

Public opinion polls have found most Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

But a segment of the population, particularly on the religious right, has never accepted the Roe v. Wade ruling and campaigned to have it overturned. — AFP

LIVERPOOL: The world’s wealthiest democracies will on Saturday seek to present a united front against Russian aggression toward Ukraine when Britain hosts a meeting of foreign ministers in the northern English city of Liverpool.

The G7 meeting, attended in person by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts from France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada, comes amid international concern Russia could invade Ukraine. Russia denies planning any attack.

“What we have to do is deter Russia from taking that course of action,“ British foreign minister Liz Truss told reporters ahead of the talks.

“What the G7 meeting this weekend .. is about, is about a show of unity between like-minded major economies, that we are going to absolutely be strong in our stance against aggression, against aggression with respect to Ukraine.”

Ukraine is at the centre of a crisis in East-West relations as it accuses Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive.

Russia accuses Ukraine and the United States of destabilising behaviour, and has said it needs security guarantees for its own protection.

Age of introspection

Britain, as current chair of the G7, is calling for its members to be more strident in their defence of what it calls “the free world”.

Earlier this week Truss said the “age of introspection” for the West was over and it needed to wake up to the dangers of rival ideologies. She has highlighted the economic risks of Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and the wider security threat posed by Chinese technology as examples.

The G7 meeting is also expected to result in a joint call for Iran to moderate its nuclear programme and grasp the opportunity of ongoing talks in Vienna to revive a multilateral agreement on its nuclear development.

Germany, which takes over the rotating G7 leadership from Britain next year, is expected to set out its programme for 2022 at the meeting. Ministers from the European Union, Australia, South Korea and India will take part in some sessions as guests of the G7, along with representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). — Reuters

BRASILIA: Brazil’s health ministry said its website was hit on Friday by a hacker attack that took several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates.

The government put off for a week implementing new health requirements for travelers arriving in Brazil due to the attack.

“The health ministry reports that in the early hours of Friday it suffered an incident that temporarily compromised some of its systems ... which are currently unavailable,“ it said in a statement.

Police said they were investigating the attack.

The alleged hackers, calling themselves Lapsus$ Group” posted a message on the website saying that internal data had been copied and deleted. “Contact us if you want the data back,“ it said, in an apparent ransomware attack.

The message, which included e-mail and Telegram contact info, had been removed by Friday afternoon, but the web page was still down, while user data in the ConectSUS app that provides Brazilians with vaccination certificates had disappeared.

The ministry said it was working to restore its systems. At a news conference, Deputy Health Minister Rodrigo Cruz said access to the vaccination data had still not been recovered by Friday evening. Cruz said it was too early to say whether the data had been lost.

Under measures decided on Tuesday after President Jair Bolsonaro opposed the use of a vaccine passport, unvaccinated travelers arriving in Brazil will have to quarantine for five days and be tested for Covid-19.

The requirement was due to start on Saturday, but the government said that will be postponed for a week as vaccination data was not accessible online following the attack.

Covid-19 tracing forms for arriving airline passengers were still available on health regulator Anvisa’s website, which was not targeted. — Reuters

GENEVA: Omicron does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous Covid variants, and is “highly unlikely” to fully dodge vaccine protections, a top WHO official told AFP Tuesday.

Speaking to AFP, the World Health Organization's second-in-command, said that while a lot remained to be learned about the new, heavily mutated variant of Covid-19, preliminary data indicated it did not make people sicker than Delta and other strains.

“The preliminary data doesn’t indicate that this is more severe. In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity,“ WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said in an interview, insisting though that more research was needed.

“It’s very early days, we have to be very careful how we interpret that signal.”

At the same time, he said there was no sign that Omicron could fully sidestep protections provided by existing Covid vaccines.

“We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation,“ the 56-year-old epidemiologist and former trauma surgeon said.

“There’s no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be so” for Omicron, he said, pointing to early data from South Africa where the variant was first detected that “suggest the vaccine at least is holding up in protection terms”.

Ryan acknowledged it was possible that the existing vaccines might prove less effective against Omicron, which counts more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that dots the surface of the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells.

But he said it was “highly unlikely” it would be able to evade vaccine protections altogether.

“We have to confirm if there’s any lapse in that protection, but I would expect to see some protection there.

“The preliminary data from South Africa wouldn’t indicate that we will have a catastrophic loss of efficacy. In fact, the opposite at the moment.”

In the fight against all Covid variants, he said, “the best weapon we have right now is to get vaccinated.”

Two weeks after first being identified, Omicron has been found in dozens of countries around the world.

Early data from South Africa indicates that the new variant is likely more transmissible than previous variants, Ryan said, adding that this was not a surprise.

“When any new variant emerges, it will tend to be more transmissible, because it’s got to compete with previous variants,“ he said.

The fast-talking Irishman said one could expect Omicron to gradually replace Delta as the dominant strain.

But he pointed out that Omicron had so far been seen spreading especially quickly in South Africa, where Delta had waned, and may just be “exploiting a gap in the transmission of Delta”.

There are also indications that Omicron is better at infecting people who have been vaccinated or already had Covid.

“There is some evidence to suggest that reinfection with Omicron is more common than it was with previous waves or previous variants,“ Ryan said.

But “we’re particularly interested in seeing not whether you can be reinfected with Omicron, but whether any new infection is more or less severe.”

He said that, as the current Covid vaccines aim to prevent severe disease but do not necessarily protect against simply contracting the virus, reinfections with mild or no symptoms were of lesser concern.

In any case, Ryan said, despite its mutations, the new variant was still Covid, and should be fought with the same measures, including vaccines, masks and physical distancing.

“The virus hasn’t changed its nature. It may have changed in terms of its efficiency, but it hasn’t changed the game entirely,“ he said.

“The rules of the game are still the same.” - AFP