Super Generous Texas Judge Allows Abortion For Woman Whose Fetus Is Unviable, Praise Greg Abbott!

Or maybe praise almost anyone else.

A Texas state judge today granted Kate Cox’s emergency petition to get an abortion. Yes, that’s a thing women have to try to do in order to get the procedure in Texas, even if they’re carrying a fetus with a fatal condition, because Texas’s abortion ban only allows exceptions in cases where a pregnant patient’s life is at immediate risk. Texas considers arguments like “if born, the baby will die, soon and painfully” or “the patient may be unable to have more children if forced to carry the fetus, which is also going to die by the way, to term” nothing more than liberal excuses to sneak in some wanton baby-killing by doctors and patients, because only a monster would ever have an abortion or consider it medically necessary.

Update: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Xitter this afternoon that the judge’s order didn’t really shield Ms. Cox’s doctor from prosecution, and this is certain to get more insane. See end of story for more.

As the Guardian notes, Ms. Cox has so far been

unable to get an abortion despite going to the emergency room three times with severe cramping and fluid loss. Her lawyers said in court that, in the two days since filing the lawsuit, Cox had to go to the ER a fourth time. […]

Cox had been told that her only options were to carry the pregnancy to term and have a C-section or, if the fetal heartbeat stopped, have labor induced. Both options could threaten her life and fertility: because she has had two previous C-sections, she would face a higher risk of uterine rupture or hysterectomy. In her suit, Cox requested an abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E).

Cox, in Texas law, is merely a vessel for the 20-week fetus, which Texas law demanded she carry even though the fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal disorder that almost always leads to miscarriage or stillbirth. According to the order from Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, Cox’s doctors confirmed the fetus was unlikely to survive birth, or if it did, would “only live for minutes, hours, or days.”

To be clear, this was very much a wanted pregnancy, but as happens far more than forced-birthers admit, a doomed one.

At the hearing where she granted the order, Judge Gamble said, “The idea that Ms Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice.” No, please don’t make with the jokes, people. Judge Gamble, a Democrat, reportedly teared up as she spoke.

The state of Texas can still try to appeal the order, and as Jessica Valenti notes, may be inclined to because the state’s attorneys are goddamned monsters who actively fought allowing Cox to end a pregnancy that was unviable and that could leave her unable to have more children. In one court filing, they wrote that Cox was, basically, not in enough medical risk to deserve an abortion:

“There are no facts pled which demonstrate that Ms. Cox is at any more of a risk, let alone life-threatening, than the countless women who give birth every day with similar medical histories.”

Suck it up, buttercup, and see if a fifth or sixth ER visit finds you close enough to death, ‘kay?

Judge Gamble’s ruling also protects Cox’s OBGYN, Dr. Damla Karsan, from any legal repercussions for performing the procedure. Just to be on the safe side, Cox’s husband joined the lawsuit in case some asshole tried to punish him for supporting his wife; he too should be covered by the order, which enjoins the state of Texas and all its legal hounds from enforcing the abortion ban against “Plaintiffs and their staff, nurses, pharmacists, agents, and patients, as applied to Ms. Cox's current pregnancy.”

Valenti warns, however, that beyond this case,

[There’s] also a bigger anti-abortion strategy at play here around fatal fetal anomalies. The anti-abortion movement is desperate to paint prenatal testing as unreliable, and to shame women who want to end doomed pregnancies.

Texas Right to Life, for example, responded to the judge’s decision by saying, “The answer is not to end the child’s life because of the baby’s disability.”

In other words, God wants babies to enjoy the blessings of LIFE, holy wonderful life, even if every single minute before the baby’s inevitable death is hellish torture. Either God’s very mysterious that way, or these people are so sickly devoted to the abstraction of “life” that they’re blind to real lives.

UPDATE: Speaking of monsters, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Xitter this afternoon that nuh-uh, the order doesn’t mean Cox can legally have an abortion, and Dr. Karsan and everyone involved have no protection from criminal or civil legal action. For good measure, he dismissed Judge Gamble as “an activist judge.” Here’s Paxton’s press release, with robo-alt-text from an OCR program, sorry for any errors.

That’s some lawerin’ there, where Paxton notes that the restraining order “will expire long before the statute of limitations,” so good Christ this man is a creep.

And here’s Paxton’s two-page nastygram letter to the lawyers for the hospitals where Dr. Karsan practices, same alt-text disclaimer.

More on this madness as it develops.

[Guardian / Abortion, Every Day / NYT / Cox v. Texas Temporary Restraining Order]

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