Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:
Here is a partial list of the not-medically-trained people who made the medical determination that terminating Kate Cox’s 20-plus-week-old pregnancy would not fall under an approved exception to Texas’ three overlapping abortion bans. Not one of these people, mind you, knows anything about pregnancy, medicine, or Kate Cox’s life, they each just decided that because she did not suffer from “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced,” she could not access an abortion, despite the fact that her fetus did receive, from a physician, a diagnosis incompatible with life. The list of people with the moral certainty and medical acumen to restrict this woman’s access to the health care that would in fact preserve her fertility are:
- Ken Paxton, Texas’ nearly impeached attorney general, who appealed a lower court order granting Cox permission to terminate her pregnancy, which she had received following a diagnosis of trisomy 18, a genetic anomaly that virtually always results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death, and frequently causes severe physical pain for the mother and may impair her efforts to bear future children. Add to the list Paxton’s crack team of lawyers who argue—as ace physicians—that Cox should just have had her abortion in Florida if she wants one so badly, then threatened to prosecute her physician and any hospital which aided Cox in Texas despite the existence of a court order specifically shielding them from prosecution.
More here.