AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a case brought by women challenging the state’s near-total ban on abortion, marking the latest development in a long legal battle spurred by women who said the ban nearly cost their lives.
Twenty-two women are suing the state in Zurawski v. Texas. Many of the plaintiffs nearly died due to pregnancy complications they said could have been prevented with a medically-necessary abortion. But they argue the abortion ban’s medical exceptions are unclear, tying doctors’ hands and threatening them with life in prison if they perform an abortion the state deems premature.
The lead plaintiff, Amanda Zurawski, said she nearly died of sepsis last year after her doctor delayed terminating her pregnancy. She developed cervical insufficiency, and her daughter would not live.
“My doctors didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was
sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the
standard healthcare I needed at that point—an abortion,” she told lawmakers in April.
Austin woman trying for baby says Texas abortion law nearly caused her death
Some of the 19 women shared similar harrowing stories outside the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Kaitlyn Kash considers her daughter a miracle after multiple miscarriages — but her birth nearly took her own life.
“After she was born, my placenta wouldn’t deliver. And I was hemorrhaging,” Kash said. “I lost over half of my blood volume after the delivery of my daughter.”
The plaintiffs said doctors need clearer guidance in law to know when they can intervene in these situations.
“The abortion bans as they exist today subject physicians like my clients to the most extreme penalties imaginable – life in prison and loss of their medical license. And while there is technically a medical exception to the bans, no one knows what it means, and the state won’t tell us,” Molly Duane, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Supreme Court Tuesday.
Texas’ Human Life Protection Act of 2021 states that doctors are not prohibited from performing abortions if they determine with “reasonable medical judgment” that the woman’s pregnancy poses “a risk of death or… serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
Duane argued that “reasonable judgment” standard is insufficient, arguing instead for a more deference to doctors acting in good faith to serve their patients.
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The state and supporters of the ban argue the law’s language is sufficient to allow doctors to perform abortions when necessary. While they acknowledge some confusion may arise, they argue clarification should fall on medical boards, not courts.
“You’re gonna have to draw a line somewhere, and there are going to be some hard calls,” attorney for the state Beth Klusmann said. “But with allowing reasonable medical judgment, you avoid the possibility of getting it wrong and ending up in prison… as long as your judgment is reasonable, you should be fine under this law.”
Texas Alliance for Life pointed to data from Texas Health and Human Services that shows 41 abortions have been performed under the ban’s medical exceptions since the ban went into effect.
“We know that doctors are intervening and they are not being disciplined or prosecuted for that intervention,” Texas Alliance for Life’s Amy O’Donnell said. “There is nothing in law that says a woman’s death has to be imminent that she has to become septic or that her baby’s heart has to stop beating before a doctor can intervene and exercise reasonable medical judgment to save the life of the mother.”
In August, a Travis County court sided with the plaintiffs and issued an injunction allowing doctors to exercise greater freedom without fear of violating the medical exceptions in the law. That injunction is on hold pending the state’s appeal, however.
The Texas Supreme Court could have the final word, but that may come as late as June.
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