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After an incredibly painful ordeal, Kate Cox will receive the reproductive medical care she needs — but it won’t be in her own home state. Reuters reported:
A woman who had asked a court for an order allowing her to get an abortion under the medical emergency exception to Texas’ near-total ban will leave the state to receive care while the state’s highest court considers her case, her lawyers said in a court filing on Monday. Lawyers for Kate Cox said in a filing with the Texas Supreme Court that she nonetheless wished to continue her lawsuit.
Reuters’ report was confirmed by a press statement from the Center for Reproductive Rights, which helped file the initial lawsuit on Cox’s behalf.
For those just joining us, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
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 a risk of “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 we’ve discussed, the result is a situation in which 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.
It’s also led some women to take their cases to court. Kate Cox, for example, is a 31-year-old mother of two in the Dallas area who is about 20 weeks pregnant. She also recently learned that her third pregnancy will come to a tragic end: The fetus has a genetic condition that’s likely to cause stillbirth or the death of the baby shortly after it’s born.
Because Cox’s other children were delivered by cesarean section, this pregnancy creates a risk of serious medical issues — she’s already had four emergency room visits recently — so she went to court to get a judge-approved abortion. A state district judge granted the request.
In theory, this should’ve effectively ended the legal dimension of this awful story. In practice, Texas’ scandal-plagued Republican attorney general had other ideas: Ken Paxton not only sent official letters to three Houston-area hospitals, effectively threatening administrators he also appealed the lower court ruling, hoping to ensure that Cox would not receive reproductive medical care.
That appeal, at least in the short term, succeeded: The Texas Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Friday agreed to pause the ruling that would’ve allowed Cox to terminate the dangerous pregnancy.
It was against this backdrop that Cox apparently decided to seek medical care outside of her home state.
Broadly speaking, there are three elements to this that are worth keeping in mind. The first, of course, is the personal and medical: It is reassuring to know that this young woman, who’s already been through so much, will receive treatment.
The second is the legal: Cox’s pending court case appears moot, but her lawyers argued that the state Supreme Court should continue to consider the matter.
And third is the political: Republican-appointed justices on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade just last year. With so many red states imposing new bans on their citizens, and a growing number of GOP officials continuing to raise the specter of proposed national bans, Americans in the coming months and years can expect to hear plenty of heartbreaking stories just like Cox’s plight in Texas.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.