Paxton said in a letter that the order by District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin did not shield doctors from prosecution under all of Texas’s abortion laws, and that the woman, Kate Cox, had not shown she qualified for the medical exception to the state’s abortion ban.
Paxton said in a statement accompanying the letter that Guerra Gamble’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.”
The letter was sent to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she would provide the abortion to Cox, has admitting privileges.
“Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans,” Marc Hearron, senior counsel at Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Cox, said in a statement. “He is trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer.”
And this woman also WANTS to have the baby. She and her husband were trying to get pregnant. Unfortunately, the fetus has abnormalities that mean it won’t survive. Without an abortion, she will need to wait until she hits term, have a C Section, and then have a dead baby.
Oh, and thanks to her medical history, she’ll likely be unable to have another pregnancy after that C-section. So it’s either give birth to a dead baby now and have no more or have an abortion now and (after she recovers) try to have another baby. Only one of these options might result in a baby that’s alive and it’s the option that includes abortion.
But Paxton will scream about how he’s “protecting the unborn baby” without caring that the fetus has a nearly zero chance of survival and without caring that the woman faces potential severe (possibly life threatening) medical complications if she’s forced to continue the pregnancy. He’ll force women to carry pregnancies to term even if it kills them!
This should surprise no one by now.
My only surprise is that this kind of scenario came up so fast. I expected years of matricide before all the right spines aligned.
Roe was passed in the courtroom on privacy - which another future court can still make a solid case for - but it was sold to the people as protecting women. Abortion is going to happen, that’s the hard truth. How many women, and girls, have to needlessly die? That’s just future mothers being removed from the field. Population goes down when abortion is outlawed, because girls will travel, or take it into their own hands. There isn’t some mythical white baby boom. There is, however, a marked decline in crime starting ~20 years after Roe was passed. Cuz all the unwanted children weren’t born and raised being reminded that they’re unwanted their whole life.
I’m not a fan of abortion as elective birth control, but I can acknowledge when my opinions would make terrible policy. The “irresponsible” women who couldn’t stick to a pill a day, or re-up on her implant appropriately, if she can’t handle that, do we want her to raise children?
That’s rhetorical. The answer doesn’t matter. It’s the implied reasoning that’s the point.
In my humble opinion, Paxton can’t leave this planet fast enough, Texas needs to go blue, and Republicans can prattle on and on on Fox news until they become a meme, the face of white fragility.
I’d love to see abortions be safe, legal, and rare. If people want to reduce how many abortions occur, they should find out why women get abortions and then figure out ways to help women so that they aren’t in those situations.
For example, if women are getting pregnant and resorting to abortion as “birth control,” then give better sex education and make contraceptives as affordable and available as possible.
Sadly, the right seems to want to make it so more women NEED abortions while less have access to them. Using birth control again, they like pushing abstinence only sex education (which doesn’t work) while restricting access to birth control. Some have even been calling for making birth control illegal!
Paxton doesn’t give a shit about the fetus. He wants this woman to suffer and be unable to have children because he believes she deserves it.