More women join lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion laws

[bnew]

More women join lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion laws

Twenty women are challenging the state’s abortion laws, saying they were unable to get the health care they needed for their medically complex pregnancies.

www.texastribune.org

More women join lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion laws​

Kimberly Manzano, a new plaintiff joining a lawsuit against Texas’s abortion laws, poses for portrait at a park in McKinney on Nov. 11, 2023. Manzano had a fatal fetal diagnosis and had to travel out of state to New Mexico for an abortion. Credit: Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune

Twenty women are challenging the state’s abortion laws, saying they were unable to get the health care they needed for their medically complex pregnancies.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
NOV. 14, 20239 AM CENTRAL

REPUBLISH

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When Kimberly Manzano’s doctor first noticed some irregularities with her pregnancy, she turned to God, praying constantly for good news. When the diagnosis worsened, she and her husband sought comfort in the Bible’s Book of Hebrews — the book of hope.

And when her doctor finally determined her baby could not survive outside the womb, she asked her pastor for advice.
“He said, ‘if you believe your doctor to be a godly man, take what the doctor says as clarity from God in your decision,’” she recalls.

Manzano and her husband, both devout Christians, decided the most loving thing they could do for their son was terminate the pregnancy. It was a difficult decision for the couple, who both considered themselves anti-abortion before this.


But that decision, between the Manzanos, their doctor and God, would now have to involve another party — the state of Texas.

Although continuing the pregnancy put her at greater risk for infection and illness, Manzano’s life was not currently in danger, so her doctor would not terminate her pregnancy. Texas’ abortion laws have no explicit exceptions lethal fetal anomalies.

So she and her husband bought last minute flights to New Mexico. Her doctor refused to send her medical records to the clinic, instead requiring her to serve as the go-between.

“I was grieving, I was processing all of this, and then I was also feeling like a criminal,” she recalled recently. “It’s dehumanizing … and it shouldn't be like this for health care.”

Danielle Mathisen, an OB/GYN resident, and her husband were thrilled when they got pregnant right on schedule. But after a devastating fetal diagnosis, they had to scramble to travel out of state for an abortion. Credit: Courtesy of Danielle Mathisen

On Tuesday, Manzano and six other women joined an ongoing court challenge to Texas’ abortion laws, bringing the total number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit to 22, including two doctors. The new plaintiffs, like the other patients on the lawsuit, allege they were denied abortion care in Texas for their medically complex pregnancies, including cases where the fetus was not expected to survive after birth. The suit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, claims the state’s near-total ban on abortion violates their rights under the Texas Constitution.

After an emotional hearing in July, a Travis County judge granted a temporary injunction that protected doctors who, acting in their “good faith judgment,” terminate complicated pregnancies. The Texas Office of the Attorney General immediately appealed that ruling, putting it on hold until the Texas Supreme Court hears the case later this month.
“The harms to pregnant women in Texas is continuing every single day,” said Molly Duane, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “As more people learn about the lawsuit, they continue to tell us the same things are happening to them.”

Manzano’s experience changed her mind about abortion, and she said she’s sharing her story in hopes of educating people who don’t realize how restrictive the state’s abortion ban is.

“I think I was really naive, thinking the world was one way and going through this and seeing it’s not like that,” she said. “But in the end, God knows my heart. He knows why I’ve been through this and I’ll have to stand before him one day, and no one else.”

A doctor’s dilemma​

From the first time Danielle Mathisen delivered a baby in medical school, she knew she wanted to be an OB/GYN.

She also knew she wanted to be a mother. Mathisen and her husband met playing volleyball in high school in the Fort Worth area and got married in 2019. They tried to time her pregnancy around the intensive medical school schedule, and were thrilled when she got pregnant right on schedule during her fourth year.

So thrilled, in fact, that her husband passed out at the first ultrasound appointment.

“He just heard the heartbeat and the passions of fatherhood overtook him,” she said, only half kidding.

Mathisen went in for her anatomy scan at 18 weeks. She’d just finished learning how to perform pregnancy ultrasounds, so immediately, she knew something was wrong. Nothing was where it was supposed to be.
“It felt like an out of body experience,” she said. “I thought the wires got crossed and it was the girl next door’s ultrasound, because surely nothing could be wrong with my own pregnancy.”

Mathisen comes from a family of doctors. Her aunt was her OB/GYN, and Mathisen texted her from the exam room, asking if something was wrong. Her aunt sent back one word: Yes.


Mathisen’s daughter had a “laundry list” of diagnoses — a malformed brain, something wrong with the heart, a hole at the bottom of her spine, only one kidney. She was barely in the first percentile for weight.
“It just kept getting worse, which made the decision easier,” Mathisen said.

But this appointment was in September 2021, just a few weeks after Texas banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The new law allowed private citizens to sue anyone who “aided or abetted” in a prohibited lawsuit.

Mathisen had been on the other side of these conversations as a medical student, so she knew the fear her aunt was experiencing at that moment.

“We had the most legal conversation that we could have had,” she said. “And that conversation was, ‘I'm sorry, I can't help you here. But maybe someone in another state could.’ And I knew exactly what she meant.”

Mathisen and her husband went home shattered. Her mom, also a doctor, started calling clinics until she found one in New Mexico that was holding spots open for Texans. They bought first class tickets, the only ones left, and less than 24 hours after learning this heartbreaking news, were on their way to Albuquerque. Several people on the flight assumed they were going to Albuquerque for their honeymoon, a fiction they leaned into even after they returned to Texas.

 

[bnew]

The abortion clinic was still operating under COVID-19 protocols, so Mathisen went in alone. In the exam room, there were journals where other patients had written messages of support — “you’re making the right decision,” and “you're doing the best you can with the information that you have,” sentiments Mathisen has relied on in the days since.

On the plane ride back, Mathisen submitted her OB/GYN residency applications. She’s always wanted to practice medicine in Texas like the rest of her family, but part of her was relieved when she was accepted to a program in Hawaii.

“I felt really let down by Texas. I still feel really let down by Texas,” she said. “It just makes me mad and sad and angry and guilty because I know there are people in Texas that need the care that I know how to provide. But I cannot give it to them there.”

In Hawaii, when she encounters patients facing similar diagnoses, she can offer them the option she was denied — to terminate the pregnancy in a doctor’s office or hospital at whatever point they feel ready to make that decision.
“I say to them, your heart can want one thing and your brain can know that this is still the right thing to do,” she said. “Your mama heart wants to hold your baby. I want to hold my daughter, I still do. But my brain knows this was the right thing to do.”

Mathisen is pregnant again, with another little girl. She hopes to one day be able to return to Texas, work as an OB/GYN and raise her daughter surrounded by all the strong female doctors who made her who she is. That’s part of why she joined this lawsuit, she said.

“If I can provide a voice or a perspective or a story that resonates with one lawmaker that gets them to change their mind, then I want that to happen,” she said. “I want this to happen to one less Texan.”

Legal challenge continues​

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion clinics across Texas immediately closed their doors. This marked the culmination of a decades-long effort to stop Texans from terminating unwanted pregnancies within state lines.

But immediately, the ruling opened a new question about how the law’s narrow exceptions should be applied to medically complex pregnancies. The law allows abortions only when the patient “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

Doctors who perform a prohibited abortion face up to life in prison, leading some to delay or deny care because they were unsure if the patient qualified. Some hospitals, fearing legal liability, have increased restrictions on when they allow a doctor to terminate a pregnancy.


As more and more women came forward with stories of wanted pregnancies derailed by medical complications, Gov. Greg Abbott said the Legislature should “clarify what it means to protect the life of the mother." The Texas Legislature went so far as to affirm doctors’ ability to treat ectopic pregnancies, a nonviable pregnancy where the embryo implants outside the uterus, and preterm premature rupture of the membrane, when a patient’s water breaks before viability.

But the lawsuit from the Center for Reproductive Rights says these protections are not enough to ensure doctors feel safe acting on their best judgment in individual cases.

At the court hearing in July, Dr. Ingrid Skopp, a prominent anti-abortion doctor, agreed patients had received “suboptimal care” since the law went into effect, but said nonetheless, the “law is quite clear.”
“The fault lies with the physicians [who] are not being given guidance by the organizations that usually will give them guidance, the medical societies and the hospital societies,” she said.


The Texas Medical Board, which is a defendant in this case, has not offered clear guidance to doctors on how and when they can terminate pregnancies.

“What is universal in all of the states where abortion is prohibited, and I include in that states that have 6- or 12- or 15-week abortion bans, is that medical exemptions all look pretty similar to Texas’ and in every state, no doctor knows how to interpret them,” said Duane.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has argued that, under the law’s medical exception, women carrying nonviable pregnancies should be able to access abortions in Texas. But as the plaintiffs’ experiences make clear, that’s rarely how doctors and hospitals interpret the law. This has led some women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, as The Texas Tribune documented in a story last month. Others, like Manzano and Mathisen, have traveled to abortion clinics out of state.

State District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum of Austin ruled in August that the attorney general cannot prosecute doctors who terminate a complicated pregnancy, including a fetal condition in which the fetus will not survive after birth.


The Texas Office of the Attorney General said this was tantamount to having a court rewrite the law.

“Under the guise of seeking clarity in the law, Plaintiffs ask the courts to broaden the statutory description of medical conditions that will allow a woman to obtain an abortion and to enshrine their preferred language in the Texas Constitution,” the state wrote in its appeal.

Kimberly Manzano, a new plaintiff joining nine women in a lawsuit against the state of Texas’s abortion ban, is held by her husband David Manzano at a park in McKinney on Nov. 11, 2023. Credit: Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune

Manzano said she was disappointed when she learned the state had appealed the ruling, effectively putting it on hold until the Texas Supreme Court hears arguments Nov. 28.

“When I'm sick, I don't call the attorney general for my antibiotics,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to call the attorney general for my basic health care. Unless he wants to pay the bill, he shouldn’t get a say.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed similar challenges in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma. Duane said they added the additional plaintiffs to show these cases are not as uncommon as people think.

“And then, for however many plaintiffs have decided to join the lawsuit, and put their names and their lives out there, think about how many people didn't join,” Duane said.

Jacob Lopez’s wife was pregnant when Roe v. Wade was overturned and while they were upset by the ruling, he said it never occurred to them that it would impact their pregnancy.

“You don't know until the world hits you in the face,” he said.

Lopez’s wife, who is identified only by her first initial in the lawsuit due to privacy concerns, had a normal pregnancy in the beginning. But then, at 19 weeks, they learned their daughter had anencephaly — she was developing without parts of her brain and skull.

“In our minds, we were already a family,” Lopez said. “We were buying clothes. We bought a baby crib. We had a vision of what her life was going to be. And then the doctor says this is not a viable pregnancy.”

The doctor gave them a pamphlet for an abortion clinic in New Mexico, but it was booked weeks out. Lopez called clinics in New Mexico, Colorado and other surrounding states until they found one in San Diego.

“Ideally, we would have sought care at home in Texas, gone home and just cried at home,” he said. “Instead, we had to focus on plane tickets, lodging, rental cars.”

Lopez tried to keep his own grief at bay long enough to get his wife out of the state and through the difficult, two-day procedure. But when they returned home and saw the baby crib waiting for them, he broke down. The panic, fear and logistics of last-minute travel compounded an already tragic circumstance, he said.

“At that moment, I hated Texas,” he said. “It made me question, why did we come here?”

 

[Yinny]

The devastating consequences on families who have to confront this should not exist, disgusting, horrible and keeps showing how unjust laws, treatments- have nothing to do with valuing human life and rather are strictly about denying women and couples/families of agency, reproductive rights and frankly, basic human dignity when it comes to private, delicate and extremely personal/sensitive matters. Not gonna hold my breath but they’re doing the right thing even in their tragedies/grief.

 

[bnew]

Texas AG’s office argues women should sue doctors — not state — over lack of abortion access

Lawyers in the Texas attorney general’s office said Tuesday that women should sue their doctors, not the state, over a lack of access to abortion in defending the state’s strict law.&nb…

thehill.com

Texas AG’s office argues women should sue doctors — not state — over lack of abortion access​

BY SAUL ELBEIN - 11/28/23 2:13 PM ET

Lawyers in the Texas attorney general’s office said Tuesday that women should sue their doctors, not the state, over a lack of access to abortion in defending the state’s strict law.

Beth Klusmann of the Texas Attorney General’s Office made that point in oral arguments before the state Supreme Court in a case challenging Texas’s abortion ban, which bars doctors from providing abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — typically around six weeks into pregnancy — with exceptions only for cases in which the life of the mother is at risk.

“If a woman is bleeding, if she has amniotic fluid running down her legs — then the problem is not with the law,” Klusmann said. “It is with the doctors.”

Klusmann was responding to plaintiffs in the case, who had charged the legislation had plunged the state into a “health care crisis.”

The lawsuit in Zurawski v. Texas was brought by 22 women who said that state law had forced them to carry nonviable and dangerous pregnancies to term — in other words, to go through the ordeal of pregnancy with a fetus that would not survive, and that in many cases was putting them at serious risk.

The suit brought by the Center for Reproductive Freedom charges that many of the 22 women were denied care because, despite the severity of the damage that the nonviable pregnancy was doing their body, doctors told them they weren’t quite sick enough for it to be clearly life threatening.

Forty businesses have also signed a brief in support of the suit — arguing that ambiguities in the law have incurred a substantial financial cost: nearly $15 billion in lost revenues, and businesses and employees leaving the state.

The plaintiffs argued that the 2021 law flew in the face of a long history of doctors being allowed to determine when abortion was necessary to preserve the health of the mother under state law — even when the procedure, in general, was not legal.

They contended that while the legislation included language intended to allow abortions in life-threatening cases, it was so vaguely worded — and its penalties so harsh — that it amounted to a total ban that threatened the lives of mothers already carrying babies who would not survive.

“The last two years are an aberration from a centuries-long practice in Texas that allowed physicians broad discretion over when abortion was necessary to preserve their patient’s lives,” said Molly Duane, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

For most of Texas history, Duane argued to the court, doctors in the state were allowed to perform abortions if they had a “good faith” belief that they were necessary to save the life of the mother.

That changed in 2021, when the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 8, which exposed Texas doctors to harsh penalties — potential life in prison, loss of their medical license and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines — if they perform an abortion on a fetus with a heartbeat.

“The abortion bans, as they exist today, subject physicians like my clients to the most penalties imaginable,” Duane said.

That ban holds even for complicated pregnancies where the fetus would not survive birth — something that in August caused a district judge to block the prosecution of doctors who performed abortions in those cases.

The same day that ruling came down, the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) appealed it to the state Supreme Court — effectively keeping the ban in place.

Paxton’s office argued the suit was unnecessary, because the language in the ban allowed abortions in the case of “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy” that put the mother at risk of death or serious physical impairment.

In court, the state argued that the 22 women suing the state were the wrong plaintiffs going after the wrong target.

First, Klusmann argued that the women had no standing to challenge the 2021 law — because it targeted doctors, not pregnant women themselves.

Second, she argued that women with complicated and dangerous pregnancies should have no problem obtaining abortions under the law, and that they should be taking up their grievances with the doctors who had denied them the procedures they now argued were medically necessary rather than the state.

A woman risking death if she doesn’t get an abortion, Klusmann argued, would clearly “qualify for a medical emergency exemption. And so, if she has to come to court to make that happen, that is not the state’s fault.”

Judges honed in on that point, which opened the door to the broader argument that the women have no standing to bring a suit against the state because the people who injured them are their doctors.

In the case of a woman denied a medically necessary abortion, “why isn’t she suing her doctors? That sounds like medical negligence to me?” Justice Brett Busby asked.

“I disagree, Your Honor, because, as all of our patient-plaintiffs have testified, their doctors didn’t know what to do. Their hands are tied. The law acknowledges that physicians should not be waiting until death is imminent — and yet they are,” Duane said.

She gave the example of Amanda Zurawski, the woman who gave her name to the wider legal challenge — one of three dozen with similar cases who joined the suit.

In August 2022, Zurawski’s doctors told her that because of a problem with her cervix, her pregnancy — then at nearly 18 weeks — was no longer viable.

Because doctors could not perform an abortion, they sent her home, where her water broke. She rushed back to the emergency room — and, according to the legal complaint, found herself in a terrible limbo.

Because the fetus still had a heartbeat, and because she was not yet showing the signs of acute infection that would soon almost kill her, the doctors told her they had no option but to send her home, the complaint said.

“At this point, absent Texas’s abortion bans, a patient in [Zurawski’s] situation would have been offered an abortion or transferred to a facility that could offer the procedure,” the complaint read.

“But [Zurawski] was offered neither because the hospital was concerned that providing an abortion without signs of acute infection may not fall within the Emergent Medical Condition Exception in Texas’s abortion bans.”

So, according to the complaint, Zurawski spent nearly a week at home, growing gradually sicker, until her husband finally brought her back to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with sepsis — a life-threatening chain reaction of infection cascading through the body.

By the time the baby — who didn’t survive — was delivered, and the series of infections had run its course, her uterus was so severely scarred that it threatened her ability to have future children, the complaint said.

Another woman, Cristina Nunez, said she nearly died of kidney failure while her hospital waited for her to become sick enough to legally justify an abortion.

Other plaintiffs described having to travel out of state to get abortions that would once have been uncontroversial in Texas — or, in some cases, being unable to do so because in-state delays had kept them waiting so long that out-of-state doctors wouldn’t perform an abortion either

For the state, Klusmann argued that these cases — which the Legislature sought to avert with its language about protecting the life of the mother — did not rise to the level of a constitutional issue.

“The Legislature decided to value unborn life and prohibit abortion in all circumstances unless that life is going to conflict with the life of the mother — we’re just trying to identify when it’s, when it’s appropriate to end the life of an unborn child,” she said.

“The Legislature has set the bar high, and there’s nothing unconstitutional about their decision to do so,” she added.

“What is your response to [Duane’s] argument that she, that these plaintiffs do not want to sue their doctor because they feel their doctor has done nothing wrong?” asked Justice Debra Lehrmann.

“That is their choice,” Klusmann said. “They don’t have to actually obtain damages [from the doctors] if they don’t want to. But if they wish to gain clarity of law through perhaps a medical malpractice claim, that’s their choice.”

“But we can’t force them to do it,” she added.

 

[™BlackPearl The Empress™]

Women should have the right to decide their own reductive health. fukk anyone who believes otherwise.

 

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Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid@mastodon.social)

Texas is banning Kate Cox from getting a life saving abortion—claiming her fetus has rights. Simultaneously Texas is fighting a lawsuit by a prison guard who was 7 mo pregnant, had pains, was denied a break, & the fetus was stillborn—arguing a fetus has no rights. It was Never about life. It...

mastodon.social

https://archive.is/svBrg

 

[Yinny]

Was looking for this because I’m still reading horrible cases and active filings from the Atty General to this minute. Smmfh this is triggering.

 

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Texas Woman Who Sued for Emergency Abortion Flees State to Get Care

Kate Cox, the woman a court ruled could get an emergency abortion, has fled Texas after Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened hospitals and doctors.

www.rollingstone.com

Texas Woman Who Sued for Emergency Abortion Flees State to Get Care​

Kate Cox's saga proves "exceptions don't work," her lawyer said on Monday

BY TESSA STUART
DECEMBER 11, 2023

Pro-choice protesters march down Congress Avenue at a protest outside the Texas state capitol on May 29, 2021 in Austin, Texas. SERGIO FLORES/GETTY IMAGES

KATE COX, THE Texas mother who sought permission to obtain an abortion, has been forced to flee the state to get medical care, her lawyers said on Monday.

“This past week of legal limbo has been hellish for Kate,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Cox. “She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer.”

Cox, who lives in the Dallas area, was 20 weeks pregnant with her third child when the baby was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a fatal condition. Her baby will not survive, and her doctors advised Cox that with her medical history — including two previous C-sections — continuing the pregnancy could risk her life or her ability to have children in the future.

Last week, Cox petitioned for, and was granted, a temporary restraining order that would have allowed her to obtain an abortion under the ban’s narrow exceptions.

But immediately after Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued her ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dispatched letters to the three Houston-area hospitals where Cox’s doctor has admitting privileges, threatening to prosecute “anyone” who aided Cox. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court issued an administrative stay, blocking Cox from obtaining an abortion.

On Monday, her legal team notified the court that Cox had fled the state. “Due to the ongoing deterioration of Ms. Cox’s health condition, and in light of the administrative stay entered by the Court on December 8 and the Attorney General’s ongoing threats to enforce Texas’s abortion bans against the Plaintiffs in this case, Ms. Cox is now forced to seek medical care outside of Texas,” lawyer Molly Duane wrote.

Cox’s legal team, Duane added, intends to proceed with its case challenging the ban.

Northrup said in a statement Monday that Cox’s case proved one thing: “Exceptions don’t work.”

“She desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family. While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence,” she said.

 

[RennisDeynolds]

Texas is a shythole. That lady might die who will they blame then?

 

[bnew]

Texas woman who sought court permission for abortion leaves state for the procedure, attorneys say

Kate Cox, a pregnant Texas woman who sought court permission for an abortion, has left the state to obtain the procedure, her attorneys said.

apnews.com

Texas woman who sought court permission for abortion leaves state for the procedure, attorneys say​

​

A Texas judge has given a pregnant woman whose fetus had a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge to the state’s ban that took effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. (Dec. 7)

Photos

BY PAUL J. WEBER
Updated 2:46 PM EST, December 11, 2023



AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A pregnant Texas woman who sought court permission for an abortion in an unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S. has left the state to obtain the procedure, her attorneys said Monday.

The announcement came as Kate Cox, 31, was awaiting a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court over whether she could legally obtain an abortion under narrow exceptions to the state’s ban. A judge gave Cox, a mother of two from the Dallas area, permission last week but that decision was put on hold by the state’s all-Republican high court.

“Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which was representing Cox.

The organization did not disclose where Cox went. On Monday, she was 20 weeks and six days pregnant.

Cox was believed to be the first woman in the U.S. to ask a court for permission for an abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year. Her lawsuit quickly became a high-profile test of bans in Texas and a dozen other GOP-controlled states, where abortion is prohibited at nearly all stages of pregnancy.



Days after Cox filed her lawsuit, a pregnant woman in Kentucky also asked a court to allow an abortion. There has been no ruling yet in that case.

Earlier Monday, two medical groups in the U.S. urged the Texas Supreme Court to rule in favor of Cox. Her attorneys said she had been to the emergency at least four times since becoming pregnant again in August.

“The pervasive ‘climate of fear’ among the Texas medical community is certain to be made worse by this case and the State’s actions in opposing the abortion Ms. Cox needs,” read the brief, which was filed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Texas’ abortion ban makes narrow exceptions when the life of the mother is in danger but not for fetal anomalies.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has defended the state’s strict anti-abortion laws for nearly a decade, argued that Cox did not demonstrate that the pregnancy had put her life in danger.

“The Texas Legislature did not intend for courts to become revolving doors of permission slips to obtain abortions,” Paxton’s office wrote in a filing to the state Supreme Court last week.

Doctors told Cox that her fetus has a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth, and low survival rates, according to her lawsuit filed last week in Austin. They also told Cox that inducing labor or carrying the baby to term could jeopardize her ability to have another child.

Trisomy 18 occurs in approximately 1 in 2,500 diagnosed pregnancies, doctors told the court in the brief filed Monday. There is no live birth in about 70% of pregnancies involving the diagnosis that proceed past 12 weeks gestational age, according to the brief.

The termination of pregnancies because of fetal anomalies or other often-fatal medical problems is seldom discussed in national debates over abortion. There are no recent statistics on the frequency of terminations for fetal anomalies in the U.S. but experts say it’s a small percentage of total procedures.

 

[3rdWorld]

Yet they keep saying Texas is this great place to live..the laws are draconian and sentences extreme over there.

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

Ladies, this is YOUR fight.

​

 

[bnew]

https://archive.is/q13Kt

https://archive.is/h5jwd

 

[Dameon Farrow]

Not gonna go over well at election time for the gop. Attitudes have shifted. You have folks who wouldn't dream of getting an abortion understanding their should be leeway where a woman should be able to get one if she sees fit.

 

[Dameon Farrow]

Of course tlr maga ignores this thread.