Texas Proves Abortion Ban Is About Punishing Women, Not Any Great Love Of Babies
The state appealed a judge’s ruling allowing doctors to perform abortions to save the life of the mother or for fatal fetal anomalies
On Friday, a Texas judge issued a temporary partial injunction against the state’s abortion ban, finding in favor of a group of more than a dozen Texas women who were denied abortions despite their “complicated pregnancies” and two doctors who sued the state seeking clarity on when, exactly, doctors are allowed to perform medically necessary abortions. The plaintiffs in the case were represented by lawyers from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Defendants are temporarily enjoined from enforcing Texas’s abortion bans in connection with any abortion care provided by the Physician Plaintiffs and physicians throughout Texas to a pregnant person where, in a physician’s good faith judgment and in consultation with the pregnant person, the pregnant person has an emergent medical condition requiring abortion care,” wrote Travis County Judge Jessica Mangrum.
“The Court finds,” she continued, “that physical medical conditions include, at a minimum: a physical medical condition or complication of pregnancy that poses a risk of infection, or otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe for the pregnant person; a physical medical condition that is exacerbated by pregnancy, cannot be effectively treated during pregnancy, or requires recurrent invasive intervention; and/or a fetal condition where the fetus is unlikely to survive the pregnancy and sustain life after birth.”
Judge Mangrum also determined that the plaintiffs should have been allowed to have abortions but were unable to obtain them because of the lack of clarity in the law.
“Today’s ruling should prevent other Texans from suffering the unthinkable trauma our plaintiffs endured,” said Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a press release on Friday. “It would be unconscionable for the State of Texas to appeal this ruling. The court has been clear: doctors must be able to provide patients the standard of care in pregnancy complications. That standard of care in certain cases is abortion because it is essential, life-saving healthcare. This decision is a win for Texans with pregnancy complications, however Texas is still denying the right to abortion care for the vast majority of those who seek it.”
“For the first time in a long time, I cried for joy when I heard the news,” said lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski. “This is exactly why we did this. This is why we put ourselves through the pain and the trauma over and over again to share our experiences and the harms caused by these awful laws. I have a sense of relief, a sense of hope, and a weight has been lifted. Now people don’t have to be pregnant and scared in Texas anymore. We’re back to relying on doctors and not politicians to help us make the best medical decisions for our bodies and our lives.”
Now, this seems like common sense, right? Especially given that forced birthers keep crying that the only reason things are going so horribly wrong with their abortion bans is because stupid doctors don’t understand the laws and how they actually do allow for medically necessary abortions to save the life of the mother.
You would think that most people would agree that what happened to this plaintiff in the case never should have happened to her or anyone.
Via CBS:
Samantha Casiano, who was forced to carry a pregnancy to term, even though her baby suffered from a condition doctors told her was 100% fatal, testified in July that her doctor told her that she did not have any options beyond continuing her pregnancy because of Texas' abortion laws.
"I felt like I was abandoned," she said. "I felt like I didn't know how to deal with the situation."
Casiano, who has four children, had to carry the baby to term, and her baby daughter died four hours after birth. In describing how she couldn't go to work because she couldn't bear the questions about her baby and visible pregnancy, Casiano became so emotional that she threw up in the courtroom. The court recessed immediately afterward.
The lawsuit had argued that the laws' vague wording made doctors unwilling to provide abortions despite the fetuses having no chance of survival.
Alas, no.
On Saturday, the day after the ruling was issued, the Texas attorney general’s office issued an accelerated interlocutory appeal, which they claim will allow them to keep killing women or forcing them to watch their nonviable babies die until the whole thing is settled in a more official manner.
If the whole point of their anti-abortion nonsense was about saving the lives of babies, why on earth would they want so badly to force people to give birth to babies that cannot survive outside of the womb? They’re not getting a baby out of it either way, but they still want to force the woman to go through with labor and delivery and the trauma of watching her baby die.
Why? Because it’s not about the freaking baby to begin with. It is about “consequences.” It is about punishing women for having had sex. It is about genuinely believing that if God put a baby in you without a skull, he did it for a reason so you better give birth to that baby and then spend four hours watching it die a slow painful death.
I usually use inclusive language when I talk about abortion, because it’s not just cis women who need abortion care. However, this particular move is very explicitly about misogyny and controlling women’s sexual behavior. The Right thinks that if they can force “consequences” on women for being sexually active, that they will reverse the sexual revolution and get their full patriarchy back. The idea of any woman “getting away” with escaping her punishment makes them very angry. They want these women, going through this trauma, to be an example to all woman of the potential consequences of having sex.
I would feel hyperbolic saying all of this, but A) They’re the ones scrambling to be allowed to kill women or force them to give birth only to watch their babies die agonizing deaths and B) If you look at the rising stars on the Right right now, people like Andrew Tate and Pearl “JustPearlyThings” Davis are becoming famous and beloved explicitly for their absurdly misogynistic views about women.
I would love to actually be blowing things out of proportion, but I’m not. If this were not the current political climate and norm on the Right, even Texas wouldn’t try for an injunction against such an incredibly reasonable ruling.
I have a hard time even imagining the trauma of having to carry a fetus you know isn't viable to term.
That's fucking straight out psychological torture.
"Why? Because it’s not about the freaking baby to begin with. It is about “consequences.” It is about punishing women for having had sex."
One of the things that annoys me so much with this is that they treat "getting pregnant" as "a consequence" and make the fatuous argument that if you don't want to get pregnant you simply shouldn't have sex- as though contraception were not specifically for the purpose of preventing that from happening, in other words 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 "𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦".
Leaving aside for the moment how hideous it is that these people who so venerate the very idea of "the unborn baby" consider it, in their own language, to be basically a punishment.