The Texas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case that claims the state’s abortion laws are too restrictive and harm women with medically complicated pregnancies because hospitals and doctors are unwilling to perform the procedure in almost all circumstances.
The lawsuit includes more than 20 women who said their abortions were either denied or delayed because the law was so vague and that medical professionals feared their licenses would be taken away if they performed the procedure. Two Texas-based doctors have joined the lawsuit, which was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March.
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Texas law bans and criminalizes abortions except if the mother’s life is in danger. However, the plaintiffs in the suit said the vagueness in the wording makes the law murky and that doctors are unwilling to perform the procedure because they could be fined $100,000, stripped of their medical licenses, and spend up to 99 years in prison if caught.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, has strongly defended the state’s abortion laws, and his office will argue the laws are just and should stay in place and that the case should be dismissed.
There are nine justices on the Texas Supreme Court. All are Republicans.
Texas has one of the country’s most rigid abortion bans and is the epicenter of the fight to restore rights to women seeking the procedure.
It is among 21 states that ban abortion altogether or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set in the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal federally. Last year, the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling that had governed reproductive rights in the United States for nearly half a century. The decision set off a prolonged fight over abortion access across the country and has played a major role in state and national elections.
Thirteen states in the country ban abortion altogether.
In Texas, the fight over access is taking place, and advocates have sued to block bans and other restrictions.
“What’s really important to understand is that there are two humans in the situation,” Kaitlyn Kash, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the Austin American-Statesman. “There’s the mother, and there’s the baby. And what’s currently happening is that the mother is disposable, and my physical health, my mental health, all of these things don’t matter. It is making sure that baby gets delivered even if they’re going to die.”
Kash wants Texas to clarify the medical exceptions to its near-total ban after she was denied an abortion despite having dangerous pregnancy complications.
Kash was told by doctors that her unborn baby had severe skeletal dysplasia, a genetic disorder that affects the development of bones, joints, and cartilage. Usually, skeletal dysplasia is not diagnosed at 13 weeks, but her case was so severe that it was detected in an ultrasound. The likelihood of her baby surviving was extremely low. If the baby did make it to birth, it would suffocate soon thereafter. Hoping to avoid more pain for her unborn child, she sought an abortion. The problem was that no Texas doctor would perform it. Instead, her doctors suggested she go to Kansas to get the procedure done.
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“My baby was going to die regardless,” Kash said. “I just chose when.”
While no decision is expected on Tuesday, court watchers told NPR that there could be three possible outcomes. The justices could uphold a lower court’s injunction until the case can be fully heard in April, which would broaden the medical exception to abortion bans in Texas until spring 2024. They could leave the current law in place and agree to hear the full case in April. Third, they could leave the status quo in place and signal they believe Texas’s law has merit, which would prompt a motion to dismiss the case in the lower court.
