The Reproductive Rights Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of 13 women and two doctors. Women suffered from life-threatening pregnancy complications or had fatal fetal abnormalities.
Sarah McCammon/NPR
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Sarah McCammon/NPR
The Reproductive Rights Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of 13 women and two doctors. Women suffered from life-threatening pregnancy complications or had fatal fetal abnormalities.
Sarah McCammon/NPR
Texas judge a favorable judgment was handed down A group of women and doctors who sued states over medical exceptions to abortion laws.
The women argued that the state’s abortion ban lacked clarity and endangered patients during medically complicated pregnancies.
Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum said in her ruling that “uncertainty regarding the scope of medical exceptions and the associated threat of Texas’s abortion ban enforcement” prompted physicians to “prohibit or prohibit the provision of abortions.” We have no choice but to delay it,” he wrote. Fearing liability under the Texas abortion ban, she refused to provide abortion care to pregnant women in Texas whose death or health risks would be prevented or reduced by abortion. ”
A judge issued an interim injunction barring enforcement of the law against medical practitioners who provide abortions in medical emergency situations based on “good faith judgment.”
The decision follows an emotional hearing last month in which several women said they were struggling to make emergency medical decisions about their pregnancies that doctors said would put their health at risk.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this year on behalf of 13 patients and two doctors.
This injunction also applies to pregnancies with fatal fetal abnormalities. Samantha Cassiano testified about her experience carrying a fetus with anencephaly (the brain and skull are not fully developed) until full term. She gave birth to a daughter who lived four hours and watched her breathless, she said.
The Mangram ruling clearly states that pregnancies with “fetal conditions that make it unlikely that the fetus will survive the gestational period and maintain life after birth” are also entitled to abortion treatment in Texas.
The injunction was effective immediately, and the judge set a trial date for March 25, 2024.
