The highest court in Texas denied a group of 22 women who, in some cases, came dangerously close to death during their pregnancies, in an unprecedented challenge to the state’s anti-abortion legislation.
The ladies demanded immediate clarification on whether life-threatening pregnancies fall within the emergency medical exceptions to the ban on abortion.
The state statute was deemed sufficiently wide by the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, in a majority decision.
Plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas argued that the state should permit physicians to practice medicine according to their best judgment without worrying about facing legal repercussions for violating the harsh anti-abortion legislation in the state. This was after medical professionals refused to give them with emergency abortion care during health-threatening pregnancies.
In response to the possibility of decades in prison, tens of thousands of dollars in penalties, and the loss of their medical license for breaking Texas’s abortion bans, the women contended that providers would be too scared to take action.
In the previous year, a judge granted a temporary injunction permitting physicians to make a “good faith judgment” regarding whether to provide emergency abortion care following the horrifying testimonies of women detailing their difficult pregnancies and what they perceived as the state’s neglect of them. The state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, promptly challenged the decision.
The verdict of the lower court was later overturned by the justices of the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, arguing that it “departed from as written without constitutional justification.”
Although the justices did not specify when it would apply, they did make it clear that the court can make exceptions for disorders that pose a life-threatening risk, such as preterm premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM.
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A medical ailment that poses a threat to the patient’s life is referred to as “life-threatening,” but it need not be causing them immediate harm. The Texas Supreme Court held that “the condition must result from the pregnancy or be made worse by it, but death need not be imminent.”
The lead complainant, Amanda Zurawski, told reporters on Friday that she felt “like a gut punch” after receiving the decision. “For physicians in our state as well as pregnant Texans.”
Zurawski dilated early after becoming pregnant in 2022, threatening the lives of her unborn child by rupturing her membranes shortly after.
Despite being quite clear that her daughter would not survive, doctors told her there was nothing they could do under the newly passed state law.
Sepsis that was potentially fatal was caused by the illness. Finally, doctors started labor with induction. When Willow, her daughter, was born, she was not breathing.
On Friday, she stated, “This ruling is heartbreaking, but it is not the end.” We won’t be quieted down. Our faces represent the voices of women who are demanding to be heard across the nation.
A catastrophic birth abnormality known as anencephaly, which causes a baby to be born without sections of their brain or skull, was discovered to be present in Samantha Casiano’s unborn child. Her three-pound baby died hours after she was forced to give birth.
On Friday, she stated, “There are more women just like us.” “We’re hoping they’ll listen to us and change.”
All twenty of the plaintiffs in the complaint, including Zurawski, are not mentioned in the Supreme Court’s decision.
As per Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the legal group that defended the women, “the opinion erases the women… as though their pain and experiences don’t exist or matter.”
Adding, “the court wrote our clients… entirely out of the decision,” was lawyer Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
According to Northup, the decision “lays bare the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade” in 2022 and “utterly fails to offer the certainty doctors need know when they can provide abortion treatment to patients.”
She declared, “Texas will continue to see daily suffering of this kind.”
On Friday, Dr. Austin Dennard, a plaintiff in the case and obstetrician-gynecologist, broke down in tears.
Dennard cited another Texas Supreme Court ruling that had prevented Kate Cox from getting an emergency abortion, saying, “I’m actually surprised at how upset I am because I felt like Texas showed their cards with Kate.” Finally, in order to receive care, she departed the state.
It’s difficult for me to love Texas at the moment, even though I do. And it is extremely difficult to believe that those in positions of authority think that expectant mothers should only be carrying containers, lose all of their rights, endure the same suffering that we did, risk their lives in the same way that we did, and have no rights at all,” the speaker continued.
Following the June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by the US Supreme Court, Texas is one of over a dozen states that have effectively outlawed abortion in the majority of situations.
In addition to worsening the already fractured and disjointed system for abortion care across the nation, the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has completely upended millions of Americans’ access to care, forcing them to travel to places where abortion is legal.
