Kate Cox, a married mother of two who is pregnant with a child afflicted with fatal genetic defects, cried tears of joy on Thursday after a district judge granted her an exception to the Texas Heartbeat Act’s total ban on abortion after conception.
“It is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye to my baby, but when,” Cox said in a legal filing from the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy.”
But within hours, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton swung into action, persuading the state’s Supreme Court to temporarily block the exception and threatening to prosecute hospitals and doctors who treated Cox.
Kate Cox (Photo: Kate Cox)
Cox, who is 31 and lives near Dallas, already has made multiple trips to the emergency room during her pregnancy. Unable to wait any longer for in-state care, she left the state on Monday, Dec. 11.
Paxton said Cox didn’t qualify for a medical exception to the state’s near-total ban on abortion. She is carrying a child with Trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal abnormality, but the Texas law grants no exceptions for such conditions. Advocates of the new Texas law claim it contains language for medical exemptions, but critics of the bill say the language is vague as to be meaningless. For example, it doesn’t define key terms such as “medical emergency.”
Therefore, most hospitals and doctors in the state are proceeding with extra caution, not knowing where the line is for medical exemptions. The law threatens doctors with life in prison for performing a dilation and evacuation abortion, a once-common procedure.
Republican leaders who wrote and passed the bill have not been able to explain what situation would qualify for a medical exemption.
Paxton, who has faced impeachment this year over charges of corruption and abuse of office but remains beloved by Christian conservatives, said the judge who granted Cox the exception on Thursday wasn’t medically qualified to render such a judgment.
This stalemate — which critics of the law claim is intentional — has fed boasting by anti-abortion groups about their victories in Texas.
“Since September of 2021 when the Texas Heartbeat Law went into effect it, it is estimated that over 53,000 lives have been saved from abortion in Texas,” according to Texas Values, a conservative Christian activist group founded in 2012 by First Liberty and affiliated with Focus on the Family and its related groups.
The Heritage Foundation claims a far lower number: “There were nearly 10,000 more births in Texas over the observed period as a result of the heartbeat law. …The data is clear: Bold pro-life laws save lives. Policymakers must continue to press on until every life is valued and protected.”
Conservative evangelical groups laud Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as heroes.
These groups don’t report on women who have faced medical and legal ordeals similar to Cox’s, but more than 20 Texas women already have challenged the Heartbeat Law in state court with help from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
One woman reportedly brought a nonviable pregnancy to term because she didn’t have the money to travel out of state for the procedure.
Another legal challenge to a ban has emerged in Kentucky, according to the Washington Post. There, an unidentified pregnant woman has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to strike down the Kentucky ban entirely.
Meanwhile, conservative evangelical groups laud Paxton and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as heroes. In 2021, Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly promoted the Texas “Heartbeat Bill” and praised Abbott as “a defender of religious liberties.”
Yet public opinion on abortion is shifting in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. “Just under two-thirds of Americans (64%) say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while roughly one-third (34%) say it should be illegal in most or all cases,” reports Public Religion Research Institute. That’s up from 2010 when 55% said abortion should be legal.
In November, Ohio became the seventh state where voters rejected post-Roe efforts to ban abortion.
Among the evangelical groups pressing for an absolute ban on abortion is the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which last week sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services protesting new guidance they feared would allow pregnant migrant minors to cross state lines to get abortions.
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