Abortion is a complicated issue in many faith communities. One effect of Texas’ strict new abortion law, SB8, has been to spur people to wrestle more deeply with the topic – and to clarify their feelings around it.

Growing up in a “super conservative” family in Tennessee didn’t lead the Rev. Gayle Evers to become a conservative pastor.

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in two cases challenging the Texas abortion law that bans most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy.

The court will hear arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson and United States v. Texas, both of which challenge the Texas abortion law.

On Monday, the court will deliberate on concerns around the structure of the Texas law rather than consider whether the law violates Roe v. Wade.

Abortion rights are front and center at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, but not the way most people expected. The focus will not be on abortion rights, per se, but on the controversial Texas law designed to prevent court challenges.

At issue is whether a state can nullify a constitutional right — in this case the right to abortion — by delegating enforcement not to state officials, but to private citizens who are authorized to sue abortion providers and anyone else who aids or abets an abortion.

The Supreme Court on Monday is taking up two challenges to the nation's most restrictive abortion law: the Texas measure that has all but stopped abortions in the state.

The court's decision to consider the issue on an unusually accelerated schedule ramps up the drama over abortion, as the justices prepare to hear an even more consequential case a month from now. On Dec. 1, Mississippi will urge the court to overrule Roe v. Wade and declare that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Monday in challenges by President Joe Biden's administration and abortion providers to a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on the procedure and lets private citizens enforce it - a novel design that has shielded it from being blocked by lower courts.

The US Supreme Court will allow Texas’s six-week abortion ban to remain in effect for now, with a majority of the justices rejecting the Justice Department’s push to immediately pause enforcement of the law while constitutional challenges work through the lower courts.

On October 14, the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit formally blocked a trial court’s decision halting SB 8, a Texas law banning most abortions in that state. On Monday, the US Justice Department, which sued to halt the Texas law, sought review of the Fifth Circuit’s thinly reasoned, single-paragraph order in the Supreme Court.

Texas' controversial abortion law will remain in place for the time being, after a federal appeals court on Thursday granted the state's request to suspend a federal judge's ruling that barred it from being enforced. The brief ruling is a blow to abortion rights advocates, who had hoped to suspend the law for as long as possible while its constitutionality is debated in the courts. 

The three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1. The Department of Justice, which sued Texas over the law, is able to appeal the decision.  

Texas can continue banning most abortions after a federal appeals court rejected the Biden administration’s latest attempt to stop a novel law that has become the nation’s biggest curb to abortion in nearly 50 years.

The decision Thursday could push the law closer to returning to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already once allowed the restrictions to take effect without ruling on its constitutionality. The Texas law bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks and before some women know they are pregnant.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said Thursday it will allow Texas’s heartbeat abortion law, which allows private citizens to sue providers who perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, to remain in effect while it considers an appeal of a judge’s order blocking the new law.