A judge will allow a Texas woman who is 20 weeks pregnant to have an abortion despite a law banning abortion in the state with few exceptions.
Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, asked the judge to grant an emergency request this week after learning that her fetus has full trisomy 18, a genetic condition that causes physical growth delays during fetal development. At least 95 percent of fetuses don’t survive full term due to complications from the diagnosis, with pregnancies ending in miscarriage or stillbirth, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Texas law makes it illegal to perform an abortion in Texas under most circumstances, though it includes exceptions to save the life of the mother or to prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function” of the mother.
The lawsuit says Cox’s doctors told her continuing the pregnancy would affect her health and fertility and that she has had to seek out treatment at the emergency room several times during the pregnancy.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble (D) said.
“While we are grateful that Kate will be able to get this urgent medical care, it is unforgivable that she was forced to go to court to ask for it in the middle of a medical emergency,” said Molly Duane, a lawyer from the Center for Reproductive Rights representing Cox.
An attorney for the Texas attorney general’s office argued during the hearing that Cox’s attorneys hadn’t shown she would suffer “immediate and irreparable harm” without the emergency order.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton wrote a letter to three Houston hospitals saying the emergency order would “not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.” Paxton’s office could seek intervention from a higher court.
The Texas Supreme Court is currently weighing a separate challenge to the state’s abortion law that seeks to create a broader medical exception to the law.
Plaintiffs in that case said they suffered pregnancy complications and were forced to wait until their conditions deteriorated to seek treatment, or had to travel out of state or carry nonviable fetuses to term under the law.