The Supreme Court of the conservative American state of Texas on Friday, December 8, prevented a woman with a very risky pregnancy from benefiting from an abortion, American media reported.
It was seized by Attorney General Ken Paxton who wanted to prevent Kate Cox from terminating her pregnancy. In a one-page order, the court announced that it was temporarily suspending the decision without ruling on the merits.
Thursday, Maya Guerra Gamble, a Texas judge, authorized the use of abortion for this 31-year-old woman, whose pregnancy could, according to her doctor, threaten her life and her fertility, a rare decision in this state which prohibits abortion. abortion with very rare exceptions, one of the strictest laws on this subject in the United States.
Kate Cox, 20 weeks pregnant when she sued Texas to obtain the right to have an abortion, had confirmation last week that her fetus had Down syndrome, a chromosomal anomaly associated with serious malformations. According to her arguments, she has a very high probability of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates. Additionally, doctors told her that if the fetus’s heartbeat stopped, inducing labor would put her at risk of uterine rupture due to her two previous C-sections, and that another C-section would endanger her ability to carry another child.
A complaint in Kentucky
“Texas law prohibits voluntary abortions,” underlined, for his part, Attorney General Ken Paxton, an ultraconservative Republican, who argues that Ms. Cox’s arguments did not meet the criteria for a medical exception to the ban on abortion. abortion in the state, and who called on the Texas Supreme Court to “stay” Judge Guerra Gamble’s decision, saying she “abused her power” without “any evidence.”
In a press release, accompanied by a letter addressed to Texas hospitals, Ken Paxton had already warned Texas hospitals on Thursday that, despite the decision of the judge whom he describes as “militant”, they could face legal consequences if they allowed Ms. Cox’s doctor to perform the abortion.
In the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned its Roe vs. Wade decision, which had guaranteed for half a century the federal right of American women to terminate their pregnancies. Since then, around twenty states have banned abortion or severely restricted it, such as Texas, which only authorizes abortions in cases of danger of death or risk of serious disability for the mother.
On Friday, a pregnant woman from Kentucky, where abortion is also prohibited, also filed a complaint demanding the right to abortion. Unlike Ms. Cox’s lawsuit, this complaint seeks class-action status to include other residents of the state who are or will become pregnant and wish to have an abortion.
