AUSTIN, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — The Texas Supreme Court halted an abortion of a baby with trisomy 18 on Friday, a day after a lower court ordered that the abortion be allowed in the name of an abortionist’s personal determination of “medical necessity.”
Texas Right to Life reports that 31-year-old Dallas resident Kate Cox and abortionist Dr. Damla Karsan sued to abort Cox’s 20-week-old baby because the child has the chromosomal condition trisomy 18, which may require a cesarean section or induction delivery, which they claimed could threaten her life and affect Cox’s future fertility.
However, Texas Right to Life noted that the evidence put forth by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which is representing Cox and Karsan, “does not show that Cox’s status is emergent without life-affirming alternatives for both her and the baby,” and that medical experts attested that she does not qualify for a so-called “medically necessary abortion.”
READ: Moms of babies with abnormalities slam Texas ruling allowing abortion for fatal diagnosis
Cox and Karsan nevertheless obtained a temporary restraining order to allow the abortion from Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office responded with a warning that the order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws,” including “first degree felony prosecutions.” His office also appealed to the state’s highest court, which the next day issued a stay on Gamble’s decision pending further review, CNN reports. The stay did not address the merits of the arguments or indicate when a final decision might arrive.
Paxton’s office has said that Texas law fully permits physicians to administer life-saving care in the event of an actual threat to a mother’s life or physical well-being, even at the cost of the baby’s life, and in fact, the policies of Karsan’s own hospital require a second opinion to verify such a threat before proceeding.
“Ms. Cox’s story is heartbreaking because all of us recognize that she and her child are equally valuable and loved by God,” said Texas Right to Life communications director Kimberlyn Schwartz. “If you feel compassion for this situation like us, it is because we all know that there are two lives at stake and that both are supremely important. The answer is not to end the child’s life because of the baby’s disability, but state law does anticipate the serious risk to the mother.”
Texas currently has a heartbeat-based abortion ban that was allowed to take effect by the state and U.S. Supreme Courts thanks to its unique enforcement mechanism (citizen lawsuits rather than government prosecution), several month before the nation’s highest court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, allowing the state to also enforce a full, direct abortion ban dating back to 1925 and a trigger law signed in 2021.
Under these laws, abortions may only be performed for a “life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.” CRR is seeking to have the judiciary “clarify Texas’s abortion bans by creating a binding interpretation of the laws’ ‘medical emergency’ exception.”
READ: LIFE FACTS: Abortion methods
The Texas Department of Health & Human Services reported in January that just two months after Roe’s reversal, there were zero elective legal abortions and just three legal abortions committed due to alleged physical threats to a mother’s life – down from 67 elective abortions the month before and 5,706 in August 2021. As detailed by LifeSiteNews in June, Texas births rose 4.7 percent in 2022.
Texas is one of fourteen states that currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that pro-life laws made enforceable by Roe’s fall could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 or more abortions a year nationwide.
In response, abortion supporters pursue a variety of tactics to preserve abortion “access,” such as easy access to abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding “rights” to abortion in state constitutions.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has called on Congress to send to his desk a federal law to “codify Roe v. Wade to protect every woman’s constitutional right to choose” abortion, such as the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which would not only prohibit state-level abortion bans, but make it impossible for states to enact any meaningful limits or regulations on abortion. The 2024 elections will determine whether Democrats retain the White House and keep or gain enough seats in Congress to enact such legislation.