The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order granting a woman’s request for an abortion hours after she left her home state to seek the procedure elsewhere.
Center for Reproductive Rights president and CEO Nancy Northup announced earlier Monday that Kate Cox, a 31-year-old woman who is 20 weeks pregnant, fled Texas to “get the time-sensitive abortion care needed to protect her health and future fertility.” Her departure followed the Texas supreme court’s Friday decision to suspend her previously granted request to receive an abortion that her doctors and lawyer argued would save her life.
The state supreme court directed the lower court to vacate its order Monday evening, finding that Cox’s legal team had not adequately demonstrated that she met the requirements for a medical exception.
Cox’s doctor “asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires,” the court ruled.
“These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice,” the decision continues.
Cox filed a lawsuit against the Lone Star State last week after learning her fetus has full trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition that delays a fetus’s physical development. At least 95 percent of fetuses don’t survive full term due to complications from the diagnosis, with pregnancies either ending in miscarriage or stillbirth, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The lawsuit states that Cox’s doctors told her going through with the pregnancy would affect her health and fertility and that she has had to seek medical treatment at the emergency room several times during the pregnancy. Cox obtained permission from a judge to get the abortion in Texas one day before the state supreme court temporarily blocked her request upon Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s appeal of the lower court’s decision.
Despite seeking an abortion out of state, Cox intends to proceed with the lawsuit against Texas, according to her lawyer.
Texas law bans abortion under most circumstances, although it does include exceptions to save the life of the mother or to prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function” of the mother. Paxton said Cox failed to demonstrate a “life-threatening” medical condition or show that her life is in danger as a result of the pregnancy.
“Kate desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family,” Northup said. “While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.”
No indication was made exactly where Cox is getting the abortion outside of Texas.