San Antonio doctor sued for violating Texas Heartbeat Act

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) — A San Antonio doctor who admitted to violating the Texas Heartbeat Act in a Washington Post column was named in a lawsuit filed this morning.

Dr. Alan Braid said in the column published Saturday that he performed an abortion on August 6 for a woman who was in her first trimester of pregnancy but outside of the limitation imposed by the new Texas law that says an abortion is illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detected. A heartbeat is detected around six weeks of gestation.

“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” Braid wrote in the column published Saturday. “I fully understood that there could be legal consequences — but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”

The lawsuit against Braid was filed in Bexar County this morning by Felipe Gomez. Gomez is a disbarred attorney from Illinois.

Braid says his clinics are named among the plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit aimed at stopping the state’s new abortion law which went into effect Sept. 1.

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