Texas Supreme Court temporarily HALTS lower court ruling allowing pregnant mother, 31, to have an abortion at 20 weeks after she learned her fetus has fatal condition

The Texas Supreme Court has stayed a lower court ruling that would have allowed a Dallas woman to have an abortion after learning the fetus had a fatal condition.

Late Friday night, the state court said that “without regard to the merits” of the case, it is taking an administrative stay before ruling.

The decision came in response to an appeal from Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who opposed the woman’s abortion.

The suspension means that an earlier order by a Travis County district court judge allowing abortion is now on hold.

That order allowed the woman, Kate Cox, to obtain an abortion and protected her doctor from civil or criminal liability under Texas’ strict and overlapping abortion bans.

“We fear that justice delayed will be denied,” said Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Cox.

Cox, a mother of two, was granted permission to have an abortion after discovering that her 20-week fetus had a life-threatening disability and could jeopardize her chances of having another child.

The 31-year-old woman told Texas state court earlier this month that she had received emergency medical treatment four times since becoming pregnant with a baby doctors expect to be stillborn.

A judge granted her a temporary injunction citing the threat to her fertility in the first such case since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade last year.

“This law could cause you to lose that ability, it’s shocking and it would be a true miscarriage of justice,” said state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday threatened to prosecute any doctor involved in performing an emergency abortion on a woman, objecting to the finding and saying the “activist” judge’s order “does not insulate hospitals, doctors or any other person, from civil and criminal liability”. liability for violating Texas abortion laws.’

The letter was sent to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she would perform Cox’s abortion, has admitting privileges.

Texas became one of 12 states to ban nearly all abortions within hours of the Roe v Wade decision in June 2022.

Fewer than 50 abortions have been performed in the state since then, compared to more than 16,000 in the five months before the ban.

Cox gave birth to her two previous children by C-section and said doctors had warned that another full-term C-section would threaten her ability to have another child.

She was also told that the fetus had a diagnosis of trisomy and would not be able to survive more than a week if carried to term, warning her that an induced labor could rupture her uterus if she died in utero.

She went to court after learning of her fetus’ diagnosis at 18 weeks and sought approval for an immediate abortion.

“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to expose my body or mental health to the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” she wrote in a Dallas Morning News editorial.

‘I don’t want my baby to come into this world only to see her suffer.’

Although Texas allows exceptions under its ban, doctors and women have argued that the requirements are so vaguely worded that doctors still won’t risk performing abortions lest they face possible criminal charges or lawsuits.

Her lawsuit said doctors told her their “hands were tied” under Texas’ abortion ban.