Amanda Zurawski was 17 weeks pregnant when she learned she was miscarrying and at a high risk for infection. But the fetus still had a heartbeat, and her life wasn’t deemed to be in danger, so she was sent home to wait — until the coming infection made her septic. Ending the ill-fated pregnancy before she became seriously ill would have amounted to an illegal abortion according to Texas’ new “heartbeat” law.
Mark Wingfield
Lauren Hall was 18 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull, a lethal condition called anencephaly. Her doctors said she would have to continue the pregnancy until she miscarried or delivered a baby who would die immediately upon birth. Otherwise, her doctors could be charged with performing an illegal abortion.
Stories like these are increasingly commonplace in Texas, where we’re living under one of the most strict and cruel anti-abortion laws in the nation.
Our state’s notorious Senate Bill 8 — hailed as the “Texas Heartbeat Act” — has so scared health care providers and the big companies that support them that women are left without access to emergency services that might not be technically forbidden by the draconian legislation. Even the author of the bill has said it was not intended to be as restrictive as it has turned out to be.
So when Zurakski and Hall and a group of others sued, claiming the abortion ban had delayed access to necessary medical care for them, you would think the state of Texas might welcome clarification if the bill really wasn’t intended to be punitive toward women in medical distress.
But that’s not what happened at all.
State District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum of Austin said the attorney general — which currently is an acting leader since our elected attorney general has been impeached by the Texas House — cannot prosecute doctors who, in “good faith judgment,” terminate a complicated pregnancy. The judge said this exception must apply to risk of infection, conditions in which the fetus will not survive after birth or when the mother has a condition that requires regular, invasive treatment.
Judge Mangrum issued a temporary exemption to the abortion ban to keep doctors free from prosecution in these exceptional situations.
Rather than welcome this common-sense clarification, the attorney general’s office filed an appeal with the Texas Supreme Court, which blocked the judge’s order.
First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster justified the appeal by saying the injunction was the work of “an activist Austin judge’s attempt to override Texas abortion laws.”
This means the state of Texas does not want clarification to the overly broad fear generated by the restrictive anti-abortion law. The fear is the point. The cruelty is the point.
That latter phrase was coined by Adam Serwer, writing for The Atlantic in 2018. The subhead to his article: “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.”
“The anti-abortion fervor knows no bounds.”
Texas legislators — along with our Trump-loving governor and lieutenant governor and attorney general — apparently hate and fear women. There is no other explanation for why they continue to demand that women carry around unviable fetuses inside their bodies to make a point about abortion.
To claim this is somehow about the sanctity of life is — to use a Texas term — bullshit.
Even most Americans who believe so-called “elective abortions” are wrong and ought to be banned want to grant exceptions for tragic cases of fetal deformity and unviability. Yet Texas and other states are passing laws far more restrictive than that because the anti-abortion fervor knows no bounds.
There is a difference between being “pro-life” and being “anti-abortion.” Those who truly care about life ought to be concerned about child-bearing women at least as much if not more than unborn children.
Otherwise, the only point is cruelty.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of the new Fortress Press book Honestly: Telling the Truth about the Bible and Ourselves.
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