Opinion | A Texas Case Shows That Abortion Ban Exemptions Are a Sham

This case is unusual for Cox’s willingness to wage a legal fight while suffering a medical catastrophe, but not for the cruel bind the state has placed her in. The day Cox received the terrible news about her fetus, the Texas Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments in Zurawski v. Texas, a suit brought by two doctors and 20 women who had been denied medically necessary abortions and were seeking to clarify the scope of emergency exemptions to the state’s ban. Among the plaintiffs is Amanda Zurawski, who was 18 weeks pregnant after a year and half of fertility treatments when her water broke. Although her pregnancy had no chance of surviving, she was denied an abortion until she became septic. Zurawski ended up spending days in an intensive care unit, and has been left with damage to her reproductive tract that will most likely make it harder for her to become pregnant again.

Turning to Google in the midst of her own crisis, Cox learned about the Zurawski case and got in touch with the legal organization representing the 20 women, the Center for Reproductive Rights. That group quickly filed suit on her behalf, and last week, a Texas judge sided with Cox, issuing a temporary restraining order that would have allowed her doctor to end the pregnancy without facing criminal or civil penalties. But Paxton appealed the order and warned three hospitals where Cox’s doctor holds admitting privileges not to let the abortion go forward. The restraining order, he wrote, “will not insulate you, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws, including first-degree felony prosecutions.” On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court ruling, pending its decision on the merits of the case, with little indication about when such a decision might come.

In desperation, Cox finally traveled out of state for an abortion, though the Center for Reproductive Rights is not disclosing where she went. It can’t have been easy, and not just because Cox has two young children at home. Even for people with financial resources, it’s painful to endure a medical trauma in an unfamiliar place. As Molly Duane, the Center for Reproductive Rights attorney representing Cox, points out, abortion procedures at 15 weeks of pregnancy or later are generally done over two days, with patients sent home in between. Most people would rather not endure this process in a hotel room. “Truly, she just wanted to get health care in Texas,” Duane said on Friday. But she couldn’t.

“I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all,” said Duane.

An irony here is that if the State Supreme Court had allowed Cox to end her pregnancy in Texas, it might have benefited hard-line abortion opponents. Were the state to codify clear exemptions for people in extreme medical distress, offering a sliver of mercy to women like Zurawski and Cox, its callous abortion ban might seem slightly more politically palatable. That, after all, is why abortion opponents falsely insist that such clarity already exists.