On September 1, staff and volunteers at the Lilith Fund, an organization that helps people who need financial assistance to end their pregnancies, began a typical hotline shift shortly after the sun rose over Texas. They’re used to fielding between 30 to 50 calls in a mere three hours. But that morning they awoke to an extraordinary new reality: Overnight, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority declined to block S.B. 8, a new Texas law that bans abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy and puts a $10,000 bounty on the head of anyone—from physicians to rideshare drivers—who “aids or abets” someone seeking an abortion in this time frame.
