The Texas Supreme Court temporarily prevented a pregnant woman from undergoing an emergency abortion. The ruling was issued late Friday.
The state’s highest court froze a lower court’s decision that would have allowed Kate Cox, who had sued the state, to obtain the procedure.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, asked the court to intervene if.
In a one-page order, the court said it was temporarily suspending Thursday’s sentence “without regard to the merits.” The case is still pending.
“While we continue to hope that the court will ultimately reject the state’s petition and do so quickly, in this case we fear that justice delayed is justice denied,” said Molly Duane, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Cox.
On Thursday, a Texas judge had granted her permission to have an abortion.
That decision about the woman, whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, posed an unprecedented challenge to the state’s ban on abortion, which went into effect after the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.
At that time it was not clear whether Kate Cox, 31 years oldwho is from Dallas and has two children, was going to be able to undergo the procedure and how quickly.
State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who is a Democrat, granted a temporary restraining order that would allow her to have the abortion.
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Cox’s lawsuit was filed a week after the Texas Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the ban is excessive for women with complicated pregnancies. The case is one of the biggest challenges to abortion bans in the United States.although a ruling by the all-Republican court could take months.
Cox is 20 weeks pregnant and doctors say her baby would die shortly after birth. Her lawyers argued before the judge that the woman had to go to the emergency room this week for the fourth time since she became pregnant.
Texas is one of 13 states that prohibit abortion in almost all stages of gestation. While Texas allows some exceptions, doctors and women have argued in court that the law is so restrictive and vague that doctors are reluctant to perform abortions for fear of prosecution.
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Cox had two previous children via cesarean section. She found out in August that she was pregnant and a few weeks later doctors told her that Your baby was at high risk for a condition called trisomy 18.which carries a high risk of pregnancy loss, death at birth or short lifespan, according to the lawsuit.
Doctors told Cox that if the baby died in the womb, labor could cause her uterus to rupture due to previous C-sections, and that another C-section could jeopardize her ability to have another child.
With information from and The Houston Chronicle
