Kate Cox and the Texas abortion debacle

Trisomy 18 is a fatal chromosomal condition. Only 50% of babies who are carried to term with the condition will be born alive, and those who are have a median of 2.5 and 14.5 days before they die. In the case of Kate Cox, her baby, as is commonly the case with trisomy 18, had further complications, including an abnormality of the spine.

Cox, a mother of two young children from Texas, was looking forward to the birth of a third child. Doctors told Cox and her husband, "There is virtually no chance that their baby would survive to birth or long afterwards." Apparently, continuing the pregnancy would cause a grave risk to Cox's life and would probably jeopardize her chance of having future children. Given this terrible situation, it has come as something of a controversy that she was unable to get an abortion in Texas because of its incredibly strict laws.

Last year, Texas brought about a law banning virtually all abortions hot on the heels of the Dobbs ruling. Although the law technically enables exceptions for medical emergencies, doctors in Texas have complained about the vagueness of the wording. Some nine months ago, five Texas woman were refused abortions despite carrying non-viable pregnancies that posed major risks to their health. With two doctors, they sued the state.

[Amanda] Zurawski nearly lost her life before doctors would intervene, the lawsuit claims, even though doctors long knew the pregnancy would not be viable. After becoming pregnant following 18 months of fertility treatments, Zurawski was diagnosed in her 17th week with a weakened cervix. While she was told there was no chance the fetus would survive, she was denied treatment in Texas until she had gone into septic shock, with a high fever, and delivered a stillbirth.

Ultimately, according to the complaint, Zurawski ended up in the ICU following a secondary infection and septic shock, and “Amanda’s family flew to Austin from across the country because they worried it would be the last time they would see her”. Zurawski is left with just one functioning fallopian tube. 

Since then, fifteen other women from the state have joined the lawsuit.

Given this context, Kate Cox filed an emergency lawsuit asking that her OB-GYN be allowed to provide an abortion without the fear of being prosecuted by the state. Given that Texas doctors accused of violating the state's very strict laws can be fined up to a hundred thousand dollars and even go to jail, one can understand how reluctant they are to carry out such procedures.

It would appear that it would appear that Cox would have a good cause for being a medical exception:

According to court filings, Cox’s doctors said that if the baby’s heartbeat stopped, they could induce labor – but they cannot perform an abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E). Due to her prior C-sections, inducing labor means she faces a higher risk of rupturing her uterus. A D&E would be the best medical option for her health, but doctors in the state who might provide it fear prosecution under Texas’s criminal abortion ban.

Initially, a lower court judge ruled in her favor. However, the Texas attorney general is the infamous conservative Ken Paxton. As one could probably predict, the Texas Supreme Court is packed with similar legal and social conservatives. Cox was blocked from getting an abortion in Texas and has since left the state to receive the procedure elsewhere. As liberal commentator Brian Tyler Cohen states the following:

Granted the decision is moot, practically speaking, since Cox already left the state to seek medical care elsewhere. Her whereabouts aren't currently known and nor should they be because she should be granted freedom to have agency over her own body, which clearly wasn't the case here. And so now, this woman, who has been in and out of the emergency room dealing with both a medical emergency and the grief of losing a child that she very much wanted, has the added burden of fleeing her home state because a bunch of theocrats in power had decided to insert themselves in her medical decisions. That is what republican freedom looks like in the year 2023.

An emotional Kate Cox explains her predicament. This was not a procedure that she would otherwise have wanted:

The horrific irony here is that, 14 years after Republicans warned that the ACA (Obamacare) would result in the government's imposition into people's health, we have a situation where Republican lawmaking has done just that.

The big question is whether news like this will have an effect at the ballot box as it certainly has in recent times. Will Texas follow Kansas and Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia? (And it is worth reading ML Clark's piece here at OnlySky reporting on how state bans have led to abortions rising overall and reproductive care falling.)

Legislation time will tell. There will be certain Republicans who realize that celebrations over ultra-strict abortion legislation will be short-lived given the potential backlash.