Five women file suit in Texas over state’s abortion ban
Five women who say they were denied abortions despite grave risks to their lives or their fetuses sued the state of Texas on Monday, apparently the first time pregnant women themselves have taken legal action against the bans that have shut down access to abortion across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The women — two visibly pregnant — plan to tell their stories on the steps of the Texas Capitol on Tuesday. Their often harrowing experiences will put faces to what their 91-page complaint calls “catastrophic harms” to women since the court’s decision in June, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion after five decades.
Their accounts may resonate with public opinion, which generally supports legalized abortion and does so overwhelmingly when a pregnancy endangers the woman’s life. The lawsuit, backed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, comes as the country grapples with the fallout from overturning Roe, with abortion banned in at least 13 states.
Texas, like most states with bans, allows exceptions when a physician determines there is risk of “substantial” harm to the mother, or in cases of rape or incest, or if the fetus has a fatal diagnosis. Yet the potential for prison sentences of up to 99 years, $100,000 fines and the loss of medical licenses has scared doctors into not providing abortions even in cases where the law would seem to allow them.
The suit asks the court to affirm that physicians can make exceptions and to clarify under what conditions. But its greater power may be in appealing to public opinion on abortion. Similar lawsuits over exceptions, focusing public attention on stories of women who were denied abortions despite medical dangers, helped build momentum for legalized abortion in heavily Catholic Ireland and in South America.
The women bringing the suit contradict stereotypes about who receives abortions and why. Married, and some with children already, the women rejoiced at their pregnancies, only to discover their fetuses had no chance of survival — two had no skulls, and two others were threatening the lives of their twins.
Though they faced the risk of hemorrhage or life-threatening infection from carrying those fetuses, the women were told they could not have abortions, the suit says. Some doctors refused even to suggest the option, or to forward medical records to another provider.
The women found themselves furtively crossing state borders to seek medical treatment outside Texas, worried that family and neighbors might report them to state authorities. In some cases, the women became so ill that they were hospitalized. One plaintiff, Amanda Zurawski, was told she was not yet sick enough to receive an abortion, then twice became septic, and was left with so much scar tissue that one of her fallopian tubes is permanently closed.
“You don’t think you’re somebody who’s going to need an abortion, let alone an abortion to save my life,” Zurawski, 35, said. “If anybody reads my story, I don’t care where they are on the political spectrum, very few people would agree there is anything pro-life about this.”
Anti-abortion groups argue restrictions on abortion do not harm women’s health, that doctors can provide lifesaving care without needing to perform an abortion, and that the laws prevent only what the groups call “elective” abortions, or those that are intended to end an unwanted pregnancy. That is different, they argue, from the management of a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, situations that are often allowed under the exceptions in state abortion bans.
Abortion opponents have also been skeptical about exceptions to the bans.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is named as a defendant in the suit along with the state medical board and its director, sued the Biden administration last year over its guidance reminding doctors that federal law requires them to provide an abortion if it is necessary in emergency care.
“We’re not going to allow left-wing bureaucrats in Washington to transform our hospitals and emergency rooms into walk-in abortion clinics,” Paxton said at the time.
In response to a request for comment Monday night, Paxton’s office sent a copy of a memo he issued in July.
It quoted the Texas statute banning abortion unless there is “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy” that places the pregnant woman “at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”