(Daily360.com) – In defiance of a state ban in Texas, a judge permitted a woman last week to have her child aborted after the fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition. The unprecedented move challenges the Lone Star State’s ban on abortions and the legislation of other states that enacted similar restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Ever since the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that federally legalized abortion, over a dozen states banned or heavily restricted the procedure. For the first time since the June 2022 decision, a woman is now petitioning a Texas court for special approval.
Thirty-one-year-old Kate Cox is a mother of two from Dallas and she went to Maya Guerra Gamle, a Democratic Texas District Judge, to request a temporary restraining order that would allow her to abort her child. The judge ruled in Cox’s favor last week in a landmark decision of its own, the first of its kind since the June 2022 ruling by the Supreme Court to roll back the 1973 decision. Ultimately, undoing Roe v. Wade cast the federal government out of the picture and threw the ball back to the states to decide individually how to handle the issue.
The Texas judge’s decision is in line with the narrow exceptions permitted under Texas law banning abortions.
Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Marc Hearron commented on the ruling by proclaiming it “can’t be the new normal” and that he doesn’t “expect to see now hundreds of cases being filed on behalf of patients.” Hearron said such an influx following Cox’s exception is “just not realistic.”
Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, and her husband attended a virtual hearing using Zoom but remained silent. According to her attorneys, Cox’s doctors warned her that if her baby’s heart stopped before labor was induced, it would cause a uterine rupture due to prior cesarean sections performed on Cox during past pregnancies, which wasn’t an option this time.
A week before the lawsuit was filed, arguments were brought before the Texas Supreme Court about the ban and whether or not it’s too restrictive for patients who may have complications with pregnancy, representing one of the biggest challenges in the country to such laws.
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