Austin, Texas — A judge in Texas on Thursday granted permission for a woman to terminate her pregnancy despite the state’s strict abortion ban, due to her fetus being diagnosed with what doctors describe as a fatal disorder.
Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas-area mother of two, said she found out last week that her baby suffered from the chromosomal disorder trisomy 18, which usually results in either stillbirth or an early death of an infant. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed an emergency lawsuit Monday on behalf of Cox and her husband.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said in the Zoom hearing. “So I will be signing the order and it will be processed and sent out today.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not return requests for comment on the state’s plans going forward. The Center for Reproductive Rights said the state does not have the right to an immediate appeal.
According to the lawsuit, Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, has been to three different emergency rooms in the past month, and her doctors have told her that early screening and ultrasound tests suggested her pregnancy is “unlikely to end with a healthy baby,” and due to her two prior cesarean sections, continuing the pregnancy puts her at risk of “severe complications” that threaten “her life and future fertility.”
The lawsuit alleges that due to Texas’ strict abortion bans, doctors have told her their “hands are tied” and she would have to wait until the fetus dies inside her or carry the pregnancy to term, when she will have to undergo a third C-section “only to watch her baby suffer until death.”
On Nov. 28, Cox received the results of an amniocentesis, which confirmed that her fetus suffered from a genetic condition called trisomy 18 — a diagnosis, the lawsuit says, that means her pregnancy may not last until birth and if it does, her baby will be stillborn or survive only for minutes, hours or days.
Cox had already been told by a specialist that her fetus suffered from a “spinal abnormality” and over the next five weeks, every ultrasound showed more “multiple serious conditions,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit was filed as the State Supreme Court is weighing whether the state’s strict abortion ban is too restrictive for women who suffer from severe pregnancy complications. An Austin judge ruled earlier this year that women who experience extreme complications could be exempt from the ban, but the ruling is on hold while the all-Republican Supreme Court considers the state’s appeal.
In the arguments before the state Supreme Court, the state’s lawyers suggested that a woman who is pregnant and receives a fatal fetal diagnosis could bring a “lawsuit in that specific circumstance.”
