Leave it to Texas to come up with a way to violate women’s constitutional rights with a modern twist on vigilante justice.

At least eight states have passed laws that purport to prohibit abortions early in pregnancy — so-called fetal heartbeat laws that would bar abortion as early as six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. “Purport to” is the operative phrase here, however. Because these laws are clearly unconstitutional — at least until the Supreme Court says differently — federal judges have stepped in to block them from taking effect.

Now Texas has come up with a mechanism to end-run the federal courts — or so it believes. The state’s new law bars abortion once there is a “detectable” fetal heartbeat. But it prohibits state government officials from enforcing the ban. Instead, it outsources that job to private individuals — antiabortion vigilantes — who are deputized to go to state court to sue anyone who performs a supposedly illegal abortion or “aids or abets” such a procedure.

Their reward? A bounty of at least $10,000, plus legal costs. Imagine what that might mean in Texas, the state that brought you Roe v. Wade.

This is harassment waiting to happen. Anyone opposed to abortion could sue anyone — the relatives of a woman seeking an abortion, a counselor who phones a clinic to make an appointment, any doctor or nurse involved in the procedure — anywhere in the state at any time. If the law takes effect as scheduled on Sept. 1, the ensuing risk and chaos would shut down abortion providers in the state. Which is, of course, the goal.

It is also privatization with a purpose: to prevent abortion advocates from using the federal courts to enforce their constitutional rights. If only private parties, not state officials, are involved in enforcing the law, its proponents claim, there is no hook for federal courts to intervene. Clever, but — let’s hope — wrong.

Out of options in Austin, Texas House Democrats flew to Washington, D.C. on July 12 to press Congress to pass federal voting legislation. (Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)

As a group of Texas abortion providers and advocates argue in a newly filed federal lawsuit, “If this attempt to strip Texans of their federal constitutional rights is not blocked, then any state could similarly subvert the federal constitutional rights of a group disfavored in that state.”

Pointedly citing a 1953 Supreme Court ruling striking down Texas’s attempt to insulate Whites-only political primaries from federal court review, the lawsuit contends: “At bottom, the question in this case is whether Texas may adopt a law that sets about to ‘do precisely that which the [Constitution] forbids.’ The answer to that question must be no. Otherwise, states and localities across the country would have free rein to target federal rights they disfavor.”

Abortion rights wouldn’t be the only target, the lawsuit warns. “Today it is abortion providers and those who assist them; tomorrow it might be gun buyers who face liability for every purchase. Churches could be hauled into far-flung courts to defend their religious practices because someone somewhere disagrees with them. Same-sex couples could be sued by neighbors for obtaining a marriage license. And Black families could face lawsuits for enrolling their children in public schools. It is not hard to imagine how states and municipalities bent on defying federal law and the federal judiciary could override constitutional rights if S.B. 8 is permitted to take effect.”

There is a rich tradition, historical and continuing, of allowing private parties to wield some governmental power. Citizen’s arrests offer an example. Another comes from federal and state laws that permit whistleblowers to bring fraud suits in which they recover damages (and are permitted to keep a share) on behalf of the government.

But the difference here is that there is a constitutionally protected right to an abortion. And in the situations of citizen’s arrests or whistleblower suits, the government continues to play a role; it doesn’t recede from the scene and let private citizens simply march into court and play the role of police and prosecutor.

That’s not to say that those challenging the Texas law have clear sailing — especially not in the conservative 5th Circuit. One ominous sign: A federal judge last month dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Lubbock law that declared itself a “sanctuary city for the unborn,” asserted that “abortion at all times and all stages of pregnancy is declared to be an act of murder,” and, much like the state law, empowered private citizens to sue to enforce it.

The judge said he didn’t have the authority to “bar private citizens from bringing suit in state court, bind the state judiciary by its ruling, or force the ordinance’s repeal.”

The upshot: Lubbock’s only abortion clinic was forced to stop providing abortions; the closest alternative is 300 miles away — a particular problem because Texas imposes a 24-hour waiting period.

The latest challenge faces an additional legal hurdle in the form of the 11th Amendment, which limits the ability of federal courts to hear suits against states. That’s not insurmountable, but it could be problematic with conservative judges sympathetic to federalism concerns.

Take a clearly unconstitutional provision. Pair it with an enforcement mechanism designed to evade federal court review. This is 21st-century vigilante justice, Texas-style, wielded against women seeking to exercise a constitutional right that, at least for now, they still possess.

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