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.”
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!