This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2023-12-20 18:59:38.

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Kate Cox

A Texas mother sued the state seeking an abortion after finding out that her pregnancy had no chance of survival. State officials fought against her, forcing her to flee the state to obtain an abortion.

  • Kate Cox is a 31-year-old mother of two who lives in Dallas, Texas. Last month, she found out her third pregnancy had Trisomy 18—a condition causing multiple structural abnormalities—and had no chance of survival. Because she lives in Texas, a state that bans abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life or prevent “substantial impairment of a major bodily function,” Cox filed a lawsuit asking for the right to receive an abortion without the threat of criminal prosecution.

    • “Because Ms. Cox has had two prior cesarean surgeries,” the lawsuit stated, “continuing the pregnancy puts her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy…because of Texas’s abortion bans, Ms. Cox’s physicians have informed her that their ‘hands are tied’ and she will have to wait until her baby dies inside her or carry the pregnancy to term, at which point she will be forced to have a third C-section, only to watch her baby suffer until death.”

  • Judge Maya Guerra Gamble (Texas 459th District Court) ruled in favor of Cox, saying from the bench that “[t]he idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice.” She issued a temporary restraining order against Texas officials, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, to prevent them from enforcing the abortion ban and its penalties against Cox, her husband, and her doctors.

  • Within hours, Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to block the order immediately and stop Cox from having an abortion. “Because Plaintiffs evidently believe (incorrectly) that the TRO immunizes them from civil or criminal enforcement actions,” the writ of mandamus states, “each hour it remains in place is an hour that Plaintiffs believe themselves free to perform and procure an elective abortion. Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result.” Paxton also sent a letter threatening to prosecute any doctor who gave Cox an abortion, despite the court order.

  • The Texas Supreme Court temporarily halted Judge Gamble’s ruling the next day—a week after Cox received confirmation that her fetus had a lethal condition—saying that it needed more time to weigh in on the matter.

  • Three days later, without any word from the Texas Supreme Court, Cox was forced to leave the state to obtain an abortion and end any further risk to her health. “This is why judges and politicians should not be making healthcare decisions for pregnant people—they are not doctors,” the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. “This is the result of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade: women are forced to beg for urgent healthcare in court.”

  • The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Cox in a unanimous 9-0 decision holding that Cox’s physician did not use the correct phrasing to gain an exception to the state’s abortion bans. “Dr. Karsan did not assert…that in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires,” the court wrote (emphasis added). Instead, Dr. Karsan said that in her “good faith belief and medical recommendation” Cox “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from her current pregnancy that places her at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of her reproductive functions” if an abortion is not performed (emphasis added). Which is the exact same thing to everyone who doesn’t have a political agenda to stop all abortions, even at the risk of the mother’s life.

Jane Doe

The same week, a Kentucky woman filed a lawsuit challenging two of the state’s abortion bans—one that prohibits abortion at six weeks of pregnancy and another that forbids all abortions, at any time, except “to prevent the death or substantial risk of death due to a physical condition, or to prevent the serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of a pregnant woman.”

  • The woman, going by the pseudonym Jane Doe to protect her identity, was eight weeks pregnant when she filed a class action lawsuit seeking the right to have an abortion—not just for herself, but for all other women in the state. The lawsuit relies in part on the argument that the two abortion bans violate the Kentucky Constitution’s right to privacy and right to self-determination. “Whether to take on the health risks and responsibilities of pregnancy and parenting is a personal and consequential decision that must be left to the individual to determine for herself without governmental interference,” the lawsuit states. “Pregnant Kentuckians have the right to determine their own futures and make private decisions about their lives and relationships. Access to safe and legal abortion is essential to effectuating those rights.”
  • Five days later, Doe’s lawyers informed the court that she learned her embryo no longer has cardiac activity. Kentucky’s abortion bans do not contain exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies. According to Rolling Stone, she reportedly intends to continue the lawsuit.

Brittany Watts

While Cox was fortunate enough to have the funds and forewarning to obtain an abortion out of state, other women are not so lucky. 33-year-old Brittany Watts, a Black woman in Ohio, was 22 weeks pregnant when she suffered a miscarriage at home. She is now charged with abuse of a corpse and faces up to a year in prison.

  • According to the Washington Post, Watts first visited the hospital on September 19 experiencing “intense” pain and passing large clots of blood. She was diagnosed with preterm premature rupture of membrane and had no detectable amniotic fluid. Doctors told her the pregnancy was not viable and recommended inducing labor to save her life. Watts left the hospital against medical advice to “better process what was happening to her at home.”
  • Watts returned to the hospital the next day expecting to be induced to deliver her preterm pregnancy. However, she was left sitting for eight hours awaiting care while doctors debated the legality of the procedure. “It was the fear of, is this going to constitute an abortion and are we able to do that,” Watts’ lawyer said. She ultimately left again without receiving care.
  • On September 22, Watts awoke in pain and delivered a stillborn fetus over the toilet in her home. She ended up back at the hospital, her fourth visit that week, telling a nurse what had happened. The nurse called law enforcement to investigate the possibility that Watts had delivered a live baby and abandoned it. Instead, what police and later a coroner found was that the fetus had died before passing through the birth canal.
  • Despite all evidence pointing to the fact that Watts miscarried, Warren County prosecutors charged her with abuse of a corpse for failing to fish the fetal remains from the toilet. “The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died — it’s the fact that the baby was put into a toilet, large enough to clog up a toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on [with] her day,” Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri said. The law, which states that a “human corpse” shall not be treated “in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities,” was originally written to criminalize grave robbing.
  • More and more often in a post-Roe world, pregnant women like Watts, who was not even trying to get an abortion, have found themselves charged with “cri…

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