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When Texas Republican policymakers approved an abortion ban, their law created an exception of sorts: Physicians are able to terminate pregnancies after six weeks if there’s “substantial” harm to pregnant women. There is, however, one rather dramatic flaw with the provision: No one seems to know what exactly that means.
As a result, medical professionals in the Lone Star State — fearing enormous financial penalties and possible prison sentences — have refused to treat many patients in need of reproductive care. In fact, as a recent New York Times report added, some Texas physicians have been afraid to even mention the possibility of abortion, “or to forward medical records to another provider.”
There’s ongoing litigation that intends to help establish clear boundaries that Republican policymakers failed to create. As NBC News reported, the case has already generated one victory.
Women in Texas with complicated pregnancies will be exempted from a state abortion ban under a temporary injunction issued on Friday, with the judge citing a lack of clarity on the ban’s medical exemptions. Travis County District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum in her ruling sided with women and doctors who sued Texas over the abortion ban.
“The Court finds that there is uncertainty regarding whether the medical exception to Texas’ abortion bans ... permits a physician to provide abortion care where, in the physician’s good faith judgment and in consultation with the pregnant person, a pregnant person has a physical emergent medical condition,” Mangrum wrote in the ruling.
The ruling is being appealed, before we get to that, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
It was five months ago when a group of Texas women who were denied abortions despite grave risks sued over the GOP-imposed ban. The New York Times noted that their litigation marked “the first time that pregnant women themselves have taken legal action against the bans that have shut down access to abortion across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.”
As we discussed soon after, the women who filed the case actually wanted to be pregnant — until they learned about their tragic circumstances, including two fetuses that had no skulls.
Legal filings can sometimes be dry and technical, but this lawsuit was a qualitatively different kind of document. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, the filing detailed “the gruesome reality of life in a post-Roe America, specifically in Texas.” The Times’ report added that one of the plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski, “was told she was not yet sick enough to receive an abortion, then twice became septic, and was left with so much scar tissue that one of her fallopian tubes is permanently closed.”
“You don’t think you’re somebody who’s going to need an abortion, let alone an abortion to save my life,” Zurawski said. “If anybody reads my story, I don’t care where they are on the political spectrum, very few people would agree there is anything pro-life about this.”
For advocates of reproductive rights, the good news is this argument prevailed, and a Texas judge agreed that women with complicated pregnancies in the state deserve an exemption from the ambiguously worded ban.
The bad news is that the Texas attorney general’s office has already appealed Friday’s ruling.
In other words, a judge concluded that the state’s abortion ban, which is supposed to protect women facing “substantial” harm, can continue to remain in place, but with an exception for those struggling with complicated pregnancies. As far as Texas attorney general’s office is concerned, that’s unacceptable — because those women must be denied reproductive care, too.
What’s more, as The Texas Tribune reported, as a result of the appeal, the judge’s order from Friday has not taken effect, which means pregnant women in harm’s way will remain at risk in their home state.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.