The more I think about the new Texas abortion law the more I think it is the centerpiece of a third attempted coup in the United States. Like the first (April 14, 1865) and second (January 6, 2021) this is an attempt to replace the properly constituted government, or part of it, with an alternative authority.
A coup is distinct from Jim Crow style efforts to maintain control of the legitimate institutions of government by throttling voting. In both the original and modern Jim Crow regimes the government is maintained but effective control of the government is given to a select minority.
In the 1865 coup attempt the goal was presumably to replace the legitimate President Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, and Secretary of State Seward with other persons. (The motives of the plotters are obscure; success in all three assassinations would likely have put the anti-slavery House Speaker Schuyler Colfax into office which might contradict a pro-Confederacy goal.)
The 2021 coup attempt was explicitly described as intending to prevent certification of President Biden's election and substitute the previous President Trump.
The current September 1, 2021, action is clouded by not targetting specific office holders. Instead it appears to have the goal of replacing the constitutionally constrained criminal process with a legally sanctioned private system of intimidation through the civil courts.
This law cynically clothes itself in anti-abortion rhetoric but the abortion issue is a smokescreen. This tactic is effective because it bypasses most conversations about authoritarian governance. Half the population has already acceded to the government enforcing their moral belief on this issue even though many of this group are generally opposed in principle to governmental intervention in private life. The other half is opposed to the government enforcing morality even though many support a larger governmental role in general. (It further confuses the debate that many on the "pro-abortion" side are actually opposed to abortion in general but adamantly oppose a primary role for the government to enforce it.)
The law is portrayed as empowering individual citizens to enforce their personal morality against other citizens. Again this is nonsense. Ordinary individuals do not have the resources to risk private litigation in the civil courts in the hopes of winning their costs plus $10,000. This power is instead being given to rich political individuals and non-governmental organizations who can afford to hire attorneys to pursue vulnerable targets.
This law shifts the power of intimidation further into the hands of the rich, expands the scope of intimidation to encompass the middle classes (in addition to the truly poor), and suborns support from those middle classes by disguising its purpose under a cloak of morality. In actual reality it provides a model for bypassing the rule of law and substituting a rule of terror at the hands of the few and the rich.