{"id":600787,"date":"2023-12-12T00:43:27","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T21:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/dramatic-texas-case-underscores-minefields-for-courts-on-abortion\/"},"modified":"2023-12-12T00:43:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T21:43:27","slug":"dramatic-texas-case-underscores-minefields-for-courts-on-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/dramatic-texas-case-underscores-minefields-for-courts-on-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"#Dramatic Texas case underscores minefields for courts on abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/12\/Texas-abortion_121223_Illustration_CourtneyJonesAdobe-Stock-copy.png?w=900\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Kate Cox, the woman at the center of a dramatic court battle, has fled Texas amid a case her allies say underscores the impracticality of having courts make determinations about a woman\u2019s rights to get an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are talking about urgent medical care. Kate is already 20 weeks pregnant,\u201d Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said Friday in a statement before Cox left Texas. <\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr1_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThis is why people should not need to beg for healthcare in a court of law,\u201d added Duane, whose organization filed a lawsuit on Cox\u2019s behalf to allow her to get an abortion in the state despite the near-total ban it implemented after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, the Texas state Supreme Court ruled that Cox could not have an abortion \u2014 a procedure that her doctors said was necessary to save her uterus and potentially her life.<\/p>\n<p>That ruling was temporary \u2014 a judgment that left the status quo in place while the court rules\u00a0on a broader legal challenge to state abortion laws.<\/p>\n<p>But Duane said Friday that \u201cin this case we fear that justice delayed will be justice denied,\u201d and on Monday Cox\u2019s attorneys said that she had left Texas to obtain an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>The case, the first of its kind since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in its June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization decision, outlines the potential disjunction between the timeline of the Texas state abortion ban \u2014 which includes harsh penalties for providers who perform an abortion past six weeks \u2014 and the progression of pregnancy itself.<\/p>\n<p>Prospective parents can only get genetic testing \u2014 which reveals whether their fetus will suffer from potentially fatal disease \u2014 at around 11 weeks, long after the state bans elective abortion.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr2_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Anatomy scans \u2014 which reveal serious birth defects \u2014 are <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly not performed until 20 weeks, at which point abortions become rare, expensive and hard to acquire.<\/p>\n<p>At 20 weeks, Cox is well past the 6-week limit on abortions prescribed by the Texas state legislature in 2022 \u2014 and the state attorney general\u2019s office argued on Friday that she doesn\u2019t meet the criteria for the kind of medically necessary abortion that the state has left as an exception in its ban.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas mother of two, is pregnant with a fetus suffering from a fatal condition that leads to miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of the infant soon after birth.\u00a0Doctors told her that carrying the pregnancy to term could put her health and her ability to have more children in the future in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr3_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>Sarah Stewart, a partner at Dallas-based law firm Reed Smith who wrote an amicus brief in support of a concurrent legal challenge to the state abortion ban,\u00a0contends that despite the state attorney general office\u2019s argument, Cox \u201cis exactly the plaintiff\u201d Texas attorney general and conservative firebrand Ken Paxton (R) has said\u00a0\u201cshould bring this case and case would qualify for relief\u201d in his response to the ongoing case over the ban.<\/p>\n<p>In that case, Steward noted, Paxton\u2019s office has argued that women who are not currently pregnant \u2014 unlike Cox \u2014 do not have standing to sue over the law, and implied that several of the plaintiffs should have been able to obtain legal abortions, though Paxton has not specified which.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Several of the women involved in the lawsuit, Zurawski v. Texas, have cases similar to Cox\u2019s, Stewart said.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr4_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>The two cases connect in another way: Cox got the diagnosis that her fetus suffered a fatal abnormality on the same day that the Texas Supreme Court held hearings on Zurawski.<\/p>\n<p>Her case shows a \u201creally problematic\u201d model for care on behalf of Texas women with complicated pregnancies, Stewart added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose women have to wait until, in midst of rapidly evolving, very dangerous potentially dangerous healthcare crisis \u2014 find a lawyer, file suit, expect that the attorney general is going to drag it out, and fight it \u2014 all while experiencing a medical emergency,\u201d she said. She emphasized that the cases involved in both lawsuits are all overwhelmingly those of women who badly wanted their pregnancies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr5_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>In his filing to the state Supreme Court, Paxton characterized Cox\u2019s abortion as \u201celective,\u201d a term without medical meaning that implies she is using it as a form of birth control. Cox has stressed, however, that her desire for more children is a driving force behind her efforts to obtain an abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In her initial filing, she said that \u201cit is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye to my baby, but when.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She added that she \u201cdesperately want[s] the chance to try for another baby and want to access the medical care now that gives me the best chance at another baby.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr6_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>The state Supreme Court\u2019s decision knocked down the ruling by an Austin judge that Cox was a candidate for a medically necessary abortion under the law.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to that decision by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, which gave Houston obstetrician Damla Karsan clearance to perform an abortion on Cox, Paxton gave Cox\u2019s medical team a not-so-veiled threat in a letter to three Texas hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>Paxton focused in the letter on the temporary restraining order (TRO) that Gamble had given Cox \u2014 shielding providers like Karsan from potential life in prison, the loss of her medical license and penalties of up to $100,000.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr7_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>While the restraining order for a limited time protected doctors and hospitals in Cox\u2019s specific case from the state, Paxton wrote, it did not protect them from private citizens, who under a 2022 \u201cbounty\u201d law can sue anyone who helps a Texas woman get an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>And, Paxton noted, the restraining order was a temporary measure \u2014 unlike the potential repercussions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe remind you that the TRO will expire long before the statute of limitations for violating Texas\u2019 abortion laws expires,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Those laws are undergoing a major legal challenge by 22 women \u2014 two of them doctors \u2014 who charge that ambiguities in the state law make it impossible for Texans to avail themselves of abortions even when medically necessary.<\/p>\n<p>In theory, the state has\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/statutes.capitol.texas.gov\/Docs\/HS\/htm\/HS.171.htm#:~:text=Sec.%20171.0124.%20%20EXCEPTION%20FOR%20MEDICAL%20EMERGENCY.%20%20A%20physician%20may%20perform%20an%20abortion%20without%20obtaining%20informed%20consent%20under%20this%20subchapter%20in%20a%20medical%20emergency.%20%20A%20physician%20who%20performs%20an%20abortion%20in%20a%20medical%20emergency%20shall%3A\">enshrined<\/a>\u00a0the right to abortions in such cases in the same statute that created the abortion ban. Under its Exception for Medical Emergency, state law protects doctors who provide medically necessary abortions.<\/p>\n<p>But in the ongoing Zurawski lawsuit, 20 women denied abortion care sued the state, arguing that this protection on paper hadn\u2019t translated to legal abortions in the real world. Several of the women charged that their doctors had been too scared to perform abortions because they feared the women were not yet sick enough to give the doctors unambiguous protection against state law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a concern that the state attorney\u2019s office has brushed off. In August, the office filed for \u2014 and won \u2014 a stay on an Austin judge\u2019s ruling that found Texas doctors should be protected for using \u201cgood faith judgment\u201d in deciding an abortion was medically necessary.<\/p>\n<p>In oral arguments before the state Supreme Court in late November, state attorney Beth Klusman\u00a0argued\u00a0that the women\u2019s fight was with their doctors, not the state.<\/p>\n<p>A woman facing death if she doesn\u2019t get an abortion should clearly \u201cqualify for a medical emergency exemption,\u201d Klusman argued. \u201cAnd so, if she has to come to court to make that h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>en, that is not the state\u2019s fault.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She argued that if the doctors were not performing medically necessary abortions, then patients could sue them \u2014 and if they didn\u2019t want to, \u201cThat\u2019s their choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights argued before the court that the women didn\u2019t want to sue their doctors, who they saw as being in an impossible position.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs all of our patient-plaintiffs have testified, their doctors didn\u2019t know what to do. Their hands are tied. The law acknowledges that physicians should not be waiting until death is imminent \u2014 and yet they are,\u201d Duane said.<\/p>\n<p>Paxton\u2019s filing on Friday \u2014 which successfully got the state Supreme Court to halt Cox\u2019s progress toward an abortion \u2014 appeared to emphasize the risks abortion advocates ague doctors face in making this decision.<\/p>\n<p>The state attorney general admonished Cox\u2019s\u00a0doctor\u00a0Karsan for failing to get a second opinion about \u201cwhether Ms. Cox qualifies for the medical exception to Texas\u2019 abortion laws.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Karsan is one of the two doctors that has joined the Zurawski lawsuit \u2014 arguing that because she is in private practice, she can speak out in a way that doctors at public hospitals cannot.<\/p>\n<p>Since the Supreme Court\u2019s Dobbs decision, according to the Zurawski<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/reproductiverights.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/2023.05.22-Zurawski-v.-Texas-1st-Am.-Ver.-Pet.-FINAL.pdf\">\u00a0filing<\/a>, Karson has treated a wide array of patients pregnant with fetuses that would not survive, and who needed abortions \u201cfor complications like kidney stones, bipolar disorder, and hemorrhage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before the state ban, \u201cDr. Karsan would have offered abortion care to these patients,\u201d attorneys from the Center for Reproductive Freedom wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, Dr. Karsan instead has had to give them information about where to seek abortion care out of state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another obstetrician suing the state in Zurawski, Judy Levison, largely retired from obstetrics after the Texas\u00a0abortion ban passed, arguing that she could no longer give her patients adequate care.<\/p>\n<p>In the Zurawski filing, Leveson argued that \u201cwidespread fear and confusion regarding the scope of Texas\u2019s abortion bans has chilled\u201d doctors\u2019 ability to give good care.<\/p>\n<p>That includes\u00a0their\u00a0ability to counsel patients about the kind of genetic testing that would let them know if their fetus is suffering from a serious disease \u2014 like chromosomal abnormalities of the sort Kate Cox discovered \u2014 of the sort that would make abortion medically recommended, according to Leveson.<\/p>\n<p>In an unusual move, Paxton sent his letter warning Cox\u2019s medical team of potential legal action to the hospitals where Karsan, her\u00a0doctor and prospective abortion doctor, was credentialed to practice, rather than to Karsan herself.<\/p>\n<p>If an\u00a0abortion was performed on Cox, Paxton\u2019s attorneys wrote, the hospital that provided it \u201cmay be liable for negligently credentialing the physician and failing to exercise appropriate professional judgment, among other potential regulatory and civil violations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This marks a stark reversal in how the state has viewed\u00a0the responsibility of Texas hospitals over the doctors who practice there.<\/p>\n<p>Since the Republican-led tort reform campaigns of the 1990s, Texas law has afforded hospitals wide protections from the legal liabilities stemming from actions their doctors take.<\/p>\n<p>In one famous case, Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch killed two patients and maimed 31 others\u00a0between 2011 and 2013 \u2014 while the Dallas hospitals that had given him credentials quietly passed him around.<\/p>\n<p>Like hospitals throughout the state, the facilities Duntsch operated at were protected by strict state laws that required anyone suing them to demonstrate that\u00a0they had been malicious\u00a0\u2014 not simply negligent \u2014 in allowing him to practice.<\/p>\n<p>But Paxton couldn\u2019t target Karsan, Stewart noted, because the Austin court had already protected her under the temporary restraining order.<\/p>\n<p>The question in Zurawski is: \u201cWhat is the standard doctors need to meet? Good faith medical judgment or something else?\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n<p>The existing medical exemption law, she said, put doctors into a very difficult position \u2014 because any abortion carried out according to an objective list of permissible conditions, rather than a simple protection of the doctor\u2019s best judgment, could always be challenged by another doctor who could offer a \u201csecond opinion\u201d on behalf of the state that the abortion had been unnecessary in that case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoctors have to be prepared to personally sacrifice their own lives,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s an untenable position to put your doctor in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Copyright 2023 Nexstar <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Media<\/a> Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/state-watch\/4354210-texas-abortion-ban-kate-cox-state-supreme-court\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kate Cox, the woman at the center of a dramatic court battle, has fled Texas amid a case her allies say underscores the impracticality of having courts make determinations about a woman\u2019s rights to get an abortion. \u201cWe are talking about urgent medical care. Kate is already 20 weeks pregnant,\u201d Molly Duane, senior staff attorney&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":600788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/12\/Texas-abortion_121223_Illustration_CourtneyJonesAdobe-Stock-copy.png?w=1280","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[117,134343,134353,73798,134661,40445,4947,134345],"class_list":["post-600787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-business","tag-campaign","tag-court-battles","tag-defense","tag-energy-environment","tag-media","tag-opinion","tag-state-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}