Texas judge grants woman’s abortion request
A judge in Texas on Thursday granted a request to allow abortion, despite the state’s strict rules prohibited, in the case of a pregnant woman whose fetus has been diagnosed with a fatal condition.
The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County District Court, sided with the woman, Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, and issued a temporary restraining order allowing her doctor to perform an abortion without she faces civil or criminal penalties under state law. The judge, a Democrat, agreed with Ms. Cox’s lawyers that the procedure was necessary to protect Ms. Cox from a potentially dangerous birth and to preserve her future fertility.
The ruling applied only to Ms. Cox, whose case was believed to be one of the first attempts to secure a court-approved abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year and allowed states to enact their own abortion restrictions .
“The idea that Ms. Cox is desperate to become pregnant, and that this law could actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking and would be a true miscarriage of justice,” the judge said at the end of a roughly 30-minute hearing. court case. video hearing. “So I will sign the order, and it will be processed and shipped today.”
Ms Cox’s fetus was found to have trisomy 18, a genetic condition that very rarely leads to miscarriage or stillbirth, or to the death of the child within the first year. Her attorneys said she visited the emergency room four times for pain and discharge — including once after her charges were filed Tuesday — but that doctors told her she had to continue her pregnancy under Texas law.
Mrs Cox, 31, could be seen wiping tears from her eyes as she watched the judge make the decision in the video proceedings with her husband, Justin. She said in an interview Tuesday that she and her husband, who live in the Dallas area and have two young children, were hoping to have a large family and never planned to have an abortion.
The Texas attorney general’s office, which argued against granting the order Thursday, could seek the intervention of a higher court. The office has said that Ms. Cox did not qualify for a medical exemption from the state’s abortion ban. There was no immediate response to the judge’s ruling.
Texas leads the way among states that restrict abortion, and has overlapping bans that ban abortions from the moment of conception and allow private citizens to sue others who help a woman obtain an abortion.
The laws provide some exceptions to save the health and life of the pregnant woman, although abortion rights advocates argue the provisions are unclear and endanger women with pregnancy complications.