Texas woman 1st to win legal permission to get an abortion despite ban

AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas judge on Thursday gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge over bans that more than a dozen states have enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The lawsuit by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first time since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that a woman anywhere in the country has asked a court to approve an immediate abortion.

It was unclear how quickly or whether Cox will receive the procedure. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat, said she would grant a temporary restraining order that would allow Cox to have an abortion under what are narrow exceptions to Texas’ ban. That decision is likely to be appealed by the state, which argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception.

In a brief hearing Thursday, her attorneys told Gamble that Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, went to an emergency room this week for a fourth time during her pregnancy.

Cox and her husband both attended the hearing via Zoom but did not address the court.

Doctors have told Cox that if the baby’s heartbeat were to stop, inducing labor would carry a risk of a uterine rupture because of her prior cesareans sections, and that another C-section at full term would would endanger her ability to carry another child.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, has said this lawsuit is believed to be the first of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Since that landmark ruling, Texas and 12 other states rushed to ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy.

Opponents have sought to weaken those bans, including an ongoing Texas challenge over whether the state’s law is too restrictive for women with pregnancy complications.

“I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to put my body or my mental health through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,” Cox wrote in an editorial published in The Dallas Morning News.

“I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.”