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Comment by core-utility | Hacker News Reader

Texas' situation is specifically worded for the state not to come after you. It's a citizen's matter. "this statute does not limit who can bring suit, so long as it is a private citizen"

Additionally, in the Texas case you can't sue the mother, only those who aid in performing the abortion.

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It's hard to say the state isn't coming after you in this case though.

Why the hell does my neighbor get to care if a specific doctor performed an abortion? Why can they launch a civil case against and be compensated financially for something that doesn't affect them in any way?

So legally speaking, the person in a civil suit typically has to be the one harmed, or have some major interest in the harming of someone their connected to (if that person can't bring a suit themselves). Texas' working of this is that the baby/fetus/whatever you choose to call it was killed and can't bring suit itself, and they're explicitly allowing the society to bring suit on behalf of that.

The way you do that is via a state prosecutor. It is absurd to hand standing to every citizen without any limitation.

Prosecutors prosecute crimes, in criminal court cases. Citizens can only bring civil cases. The public can't have a prosecutor bring a civil case.

My suspicion is that anyone can be considered a "private citizen" in a certain context. Trump certainly thought he could throw away his notes while in office. What do you want to bet that TX judges will recognize some county-registrar-who discovers-an-abortion's right to bring suit as an individual? At least when the state itself is officially bringing suit, there are a limited number of individuals who can decide to sue you. In reality, what will happen is that if the TX supreme court disallows an to state employee from participating in the suit, there will be a network of state employees who are able to inform others who are able to sue.

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