By The opinion
Dec 11, 2023, 17:29 PM EST
Kate Cox, a native of Texas, whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis and who has been waiting for a decision from the Texas Supreme Court on whether she will be allowed an abortionar, said Monday that he decided to leave Texas to have the procedure.
Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two and a Dallas resident, learned that her third baby on the way has trisomy 18, a genetic condition that could cause a miscarriage or short-term survival of the child. According to her doctors, the pregnancy even threatens her life. She still wants to be a mother and get pregnant again. If she survives, her fertility may be affected, she says in her lawsuit.
Given the situation, she and her husband requested a court order to block the application of Texas abortion bans in their case.
UPDATE: After a week of legal whiplash and threats of prosecution from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, our client Kate Cox has been forced to flee her home state of Texas to obtain the time-sensitive abortion care needed to protect her health and future fertility.
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) December 11, 2023
A district judge granted the request Thursday, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton required an emergency stay from the state Supreme Court, which annulled the possibility of terminating the pregnancy.
“Due to the continued deterioration of Ms. Cox’s health condition…Ms. Cox is now forced to seek medical care outside of Texas,” he said in a court filing.
In a statement on Monday, Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “This last week of legal limbo has been hellish for Kate. Her health is at stake. “He’s been in and out of the emergency room and I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“She desperately wanted to be able to receive care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by her family,” Northup added. “While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.”
Texas has two main laws that restrict abortion. The first authorizes private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who provides or induces an abortion after approximately six weeks of gestation. According to the second, it qualifies as a serious crime to perform an abortion from the moment of fertilization. Each law offers limited exceptions for medical emergencies.
However, Paxton and the state’s attorneys argued that Cox’s lawyers had not sufficiently shown that her situation qualified for an exception to the state’s abortion laws, or that she would suffer “immediate and irreparable harm” without an exception.
In Monday’s filing, Cox’s attorneys said another reason she decided to leave the state is the attorney general’s “continued threats” to enforce Texas abortion laws against her.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Cox’s case marked the first time since Roe v. Wade that a judge allowed a woman to have an abortion. Last week, a Kentucky woman who is 8 weeks pregnant filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s two abortion bans.
Keep reading:
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– Latinas are the most affected by the veto of the right to abortion in many states