(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke issued dueling statements after the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a landmark abortion case, with O’Rourke urging pro-choice voters to back his campaign.

“If you are about protecting a woman’s freedom to make her own decisions about her own body, health care, and future, join this campaign and help us win,” O’Rourke said in an emailed statement on Friday. “The only way to overcome today’s decision is to win this race for governor.”

Abbott applauded the court’s decision “to protect innocent, unborn children.” He said Texas has expanded programs for women seeking to avoid abortion, including extending Medicaid coverage to six months after birth, and vowed to continue to work with lawmakers to limit abortions.

No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, but Beto, a former congressman from El Paso, has gained ground against incumbent Abbott in recent polls. Abbott, a Republican seeking a third term in November, has a lead of 5 percentage points over O’Rourke, according to a Quinnipiac University poll last week.

Texas is due to ban abortions 30 days after Roe v. Wade is declared unconstitutional under a so-called trigger law passed last year, with saving the life of the pregnant woman the only exception. Doctors who perform the procedure face up to life in prison if convicted of violating the law. The law’s backers say a woman who gets an abortion won’t be subject to criminal prosecution, though some pro-choice groups have said that’s not entirely clear.

The Lone Star State already had one of the nation’s most restrictive laws, passed last year, which effectively banned abortions after fetal cardiac activity could be detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy. It employs a unique enforcement mechanism under which state officials are forbidden from enforcing the ban. Instead, private citizens are allowed to sue and collect as much as $10,000 if successful. Under the law, doctors, clinic workers, friends and even Uber drivers who helped transport the patient could be sued for helping a woman end an unwanted pregnancy past the cutoff date.

The Roe decision was originally based on a challenge to a Texas law that forbade abortion. While the Supreme Court ruled that to be unconstitutional in 1973, establishing the nationwide right to abortion, lawmakers never took the original statute off the books. So it’s possible that officials could consider that old law to still be in effect if Roe is overturned, thus immediately making abortions illegal instead of 30 days after the ruling. Skeptics have said they expect an immediate court challenge if Texas were to try to enforce that old law.

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