Woman who requested court-ordered abortion leaves Texas for procedure
A pregnant woman at the center of a legal battle in Texas over whether she could have an abortion under a medical exception to the state’s strict bans has decided to leave the state for the procedure, an abortion rights group representing her said Monday .
The decision by the woman, Kate Cox, who is more than 20 weeks pregnant, came as the Texas Supreme Court was considering an appeal against a lower court order that would have allowed her to have an abortion in Texas despite the overlapping state bans.
Ms. Cox asked the lower court for approval after learning that her fetus had a fatal condition, and after several trips to the emergency room.
The legal permission she had received from the lower court was suspended when Ken Paxton, the attorney general, appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. It was not clear what effect her decision to leave the state now would have on the lawsuit.
“Kate desperately wanted to be able to receive care where she lives and recover at home, surrounded by family,” said Nancy Northup, the chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented Ms. Cox in her case. a statement about X. “While Kate had the option to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.”
The case was believed to be the first to seek a court-ordered exception since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, paving the way for Republican-controlled states like Texas to impose a near-total ban on abortions.
It marked a new chapter in the legal history of abortion in the United States, with pregnant women now going to court to ask their doctors for permission to do what they deem medically necessary without fear of severe criminal or civil penalties. Legal challenges have arisen in several states where doctors said the ban prevented abortions even in cases of serious pregnancy complications.
Last week, a Kentucky woman who was eight weeks pregnant filed suit trying to overturn that state’s bans.
Ms Cox’s case, filed last week, was unusual in that it was filed during her pregnancy. At the same time the Texas Supreme Court was considering her case, it was also weighing an action brought by women and their doctors, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, seeking to limit the limits of medical exceptions to Texas’ abortion ban clarify.
That case, Zurawski v. Texas, involves women who said they were forced to continue their pregnancies despite dangers to their health because the vagueness of the state’s exemptions made doctors extremely cautious about when a medical condition was serious enough was to allow abortion. Ms. Cox’s husband and her doctor, Damla Karsan, are also represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Through September, Texas recorded only 34 abortion procedures performed in the state in 2023 state health statistics. In 2020, before the first of the state’s highly restrictive laws went into effect, there were more than 50,000.
In Ms. Cox’s case, lawyers from Mr. Paxton’s office argued that she did not meet the criteria for a medical exception to the state’s overlapping abortion bans, which are among the nation’s strictest, and said they would was looking for an “elective abortion.”
Ms. Cox’s fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a genetic disorder that, in virtually rare cases, results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death of a baby within the first year after birth. Dr. Karsan, who is also a plaintiff in the Zurawski casedetermined that abortion would be the safest option for the mother’s health and to preserve her ability to have children in the future.
Ms. Cox, a mother of two young children who has said she would like to have a large family, has been to the emergency room four times during her pregnancy for symptoms such as discharge and cramps.
Lower Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, a Democrat in Travis County District Court, agreed in her ruling that Ms. Cox could have the abortion under Texas law.
Dr. Karsan “believes in good faith and exercises her best medical judgment” that an abortion was the medically recommended course of action, the judge wrote. The judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Mr. Paxton and others from enforcing the state’s bans against Dr. Karsan, Ms. Cox’s husband, and all members of the medical staff who assisted in an abortion in her case.
The ruling only applied to Ms Cox’s current pregnancy.
Mr. Paxton objected, first sending letters to three Houston hospitals where Dr. Karsan can admit patients, saying the judge’s order was only temporary and would not protect them from civil or criminal penalties if they continued Ms. Cox would allow. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Paxton appealed the lower court’s order to the Texas Supreme Court, whose nine members are all Republicans.
In their letter, state attorneys argued that allowing abortions based on the standard of a “good faith” determination by a doctor that they are medically necessary “opens the floodgates to pregnant mothers obtaining an abortion” through a willing doctor.
Under Texas law, a doctor convicted of performing an illegal abortion could face a prison sentence of up to 99 years and fines of at least $100,000. The ban allows abortions when a pregnancy seriously threatens the woman’s health or life.
Lawyers from Mr. Paxton’s office argued that the standard for determining what constitutes a serious threat was clear: a doctor’s “reasonable medical judgment” that a pregnancy poses such a risk; they said Ms. Cox did not meet that threshold.