The Dallas Morning News on Texas’ abortion law (Dec. 14):

More than two years ago, when the Legislature passed a near total ban on abortion, with vague exceptions for the health of the mother, we wrote that “the recently enacted Texas law isn’t going to improve this country’s long-simmering debate over abortion. It’s more likely to mire us in conflict and legal chaos.”

And here we are. The law was not only poorly written, it wasn’t designed to change the hearts of those who view the right to abortion differently from the state’s most conservative lawmakers and citizens. It was instead crafted in a way sure to collide with the moral complexity that abortion represents.

Kate Cox’s story puts a name to the inevitable: a complicated pregnancy with the possibility of harm to the mother confronting a law that provides too little room for the moral and emotional struggle at the root of this issue.

Cox’s story is one of suffering and loss, and even those who advocate the most permissive abortion rights acknowledge it as such. But it is also the story of a woman forced to face a medical tragedy not on her own terms but at the mercy of the courts and a law that is too vague regarding the medical exception it offers.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as the law of the land, it opened up the opportunity for states across the country to pass their own abortion laws.

The court’s decision, and Congress’ ongoing failure to address this most important federal issue, have left us with a patchwork of state laws drafted by extremists who are unwilling to acknowledge much less balance the serious moral questions abortion presents.

In Texas, the extremism is from the right. There is no exception for rape or incest in Texas’ abortion law. With an eye on the polls, Republicans in more vulnerable districts promised in the last election cycle they would advocate for such exceptions, but they did nothing.

The exception for the life and physical health of the mother is so vague it is sure to be left to judicial interpretation, exactly the problem we need to avoid.

Even Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, the law that led to Roe’s overturning, contemplated a 15-week period for “nontherapeutic or elective abortion.”

Cox argued unsuccessfully that her own need for an abortion is, in fact, therapeutic. There is, according to her doctors, risk to her health and specifically her ability to bear children in the future.

The Texas Supreme Court blocked a lower court’s ruling that would have permitted Cox to receive a therapeutic abortion. The lower court determined that the health exception applied. The Supreme Court decided it did not. Which court is right is all but impossible for anyone except a medical professional with firsthand knowledge to determine. That alone is the most obvious indication that the law is not sound.

Cox has since left Texas to have an abortion, and there are those who might argue that resolves the issue and who might ask why she didn’t just do so in the first place.

That isn’t a tenable path forward. As a nation, we shouldn’t accept a legal patchwork like this around such a profound issue.

We should strive for a deeper moral understanding of the question that leads to an acknowledgment of both the innate sense that human life is inextricably linked to pregnancy and that, in the early stages of pregnancy, there should be legal access to abortion.

Society, as represented by the state, has a genuine interest in the question of pregnancy. But our lawmakers have failed to balance that concern with their responsibility to women like Cox.

These questions will continue to haunt us until we reach a national understanding codified in federal law to set a standard for abortion rights that recognizes both the reality of developing human life in the womb and the necessity of giving space to women to make the impossible decisions that someone like Cox is being forced to make.

Polling over many years, even prior to Roe, demonstrates that most Americans already strike this balance in their minds. There is space for a serious political solution. We need serious politicians who have the courage to offer a solution that the majority will embrace.