The Texas supreme court stepped in late on Friday to temporarily stay a judge’s ruling approving an abortion for a woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, the latest development in a protracted legal wrangle over one of the most restrictive bans in the nation.
Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from Dallas, had been granted a temporary restraining order from a lower court on Thursday, allowing her to proceed with an emergency procedure at 20 weeks.
But in a one-page ruling issued on Friday night, the supreme court announced it was staying the earlier ruling “without regard to the merits”. It gave no indication when it would pick up the case again.
Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, argued that Cox did not meet the criteria for a medical exception to the state’s abortion ban. “Future criminal and civil proceedings cannot restore the life that is lost if plaintiffs or their agents proceed to perform and procure an abortion in violation of Texas law,” his office told the court.
Doctors have advised Cox the pregnancy is non-viable, and proceeding with it carried significant risks to her own future health.
On Friday, Paxton warned three hospitals in Houston that they could face legal consequences if they allowed Cox’s physician to provide the abortion, despite the ruling from state district judge Maya Guerra Gamble, whom Paxton called an “activist”.
Her order, he wrote in a letter, “will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability”.
Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, said she was concerned about the supreme court’s intervention. “While we still hope that the court ultimately rejects the state’s request, and does so quickly, in this case we fear that justice delayed will be justice denied,” she said.
Cox’s attorneys have said they will not share her abortion plans, citing concerns for her safety. In a filing with the state supreme court on Friday, her attorneys indicated she was still pregnant.
The lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind since the landmark US supreme court decision last year overturning the Roe v Wade ruling that had provided federal protections for a woman’s right to an abortion for almost half a century.
Cox learned she was pregnant for a third time in August and was told weeks later that her baby was at a high risk for a condition known as trisomy 18, which has a very high likelihood of miscarriage or stillbirth and low survival rates, according to her lawsuit.
Doctors told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat stopped, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of two earlier cesarean sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.
In Kentucky on Friday, in a case with striking parallels, another woman filed a lawsuit demanding the right to an abortion. The unidentified plaintiff is about eight weeks pregnant and is challenging the state’s near-total ban on a class-action basis including other Kentuckians.
