A pregnant Texas woman who says her unborn baby has a genetic condition and carrying the child to term could threaten her life filed suit against the state Tuesday, asking a court to declare she has the right to terminate the pregnancy.
Kate Cox said the state’s current abortion ban puts her husband and her gynecologist at legal risk if she has an abortion in Texas.
The lawsuit is believed to be one of the first attempts in the country by an individual seeking a court-ordered abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, according to the New York Times.
Why even try to go through with a lawsuit? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier and safer time wise to go to a state that allows for abortions currently?
Unfortunately Texas’s specific version of the law not only criminalizes such actions, but also allocates public funding to pay ransom to those that tip the government off to them.
Instead of a war on drugs they’ve really pivoted to a war on women and the poor. How wonderful!
If you’re wondering why I say poor, it’s because abortion bans will always impact poor individuals who can’t afford to travel to other states safely. Rich people will never feel the effects of it
During the most recent challenge to Texas’s anti-abortion laws (in Texas Supreme Court) there was an argument made by the state that women should go to the court and ask for the court to allow the abortion on a one-by-one basis. Basically, the state argued that women should do exactly what this suit is doing. The plaintiffs in the other case said it’s not reasonable or practical to do, and so now someone has brought a suit that basically puts this argument right back in front of the court while it’s deliberating whether or not that is a reasonable course of action.
Further, the TX anti-abortion law (SB-8, iirc), also gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who assists (even with planning or transportation for an abortion) for $10,000 each. The current suit is also asking the court to protect all of the people involved, from the doctor to the woman’s husband, from those types of lawsuits.
Further, many border towns in TX have made it illegal at the local level to use the local jurisdiction’s roads/infrastructure to travel out of state for an abortion. This suit also will need the court to prevent those local jurisdictions from taking action against any of the involved parties if it rules she must travel out of state.
Even further, most of these laws in Texas have a 10 year retroactive lookback/statute of limitations for the $10,000 “bounty”, so they will need the court to rule on her case to not only protect them today, but for at least the next 10 years. This court protection may need to be potentially forever in case the state decides that there is no statute of limitation, as there would be if abortion was classified as “murder”.
And the state argued that women should just go individually to court on an as-needed basis to get all of these details worked out any time she needed necessary reproductive healthcare. This is a ridiculous argument.
Some women can’t even afford to go out of state, or there are too many barriers to be protected so they can return home afterward. It’s even sillier to expect people to be able to hire lawyers and bring a case before state courts within days of finding out a pregnancy isn’t viable. “Just go somewhere else” doesn’t work in Texas, and it shouldn’t have to.
PS. Women have the right to reproductive healthcare on demand, despite what the bullshit Supreme Court says and I’m not debating with anyone about it. Fuck off. I’ll block you and move on and not give a single thought about it.
Texas is a particularly bad state for the “go elsewhere” argument. It’s a 13-hr road trip to pick up my kids from A to B. A to B in Texas can be far longer than that. And it’s fairly costly. Easy $150-$200 for my trip. That’s crushing to some people.
And where are they to go? Texas is surround by other red states, whose laws are likely the same, or even less friendly.
I dearly want the travel issue to have its day in court. Cannot imagine that passes Constitutional muster.
New Mexico (which the local jurisdictions are doing their best to criminalize interstate travel, despite the Constitution and Court)
Kansas, which voted to protect women’s right to reproductive healthcare.
Colorado. And then it gets further and further away after that. If someone is on the east side of Texas, Kansas and then Illinois are probably the closest safe & legal options.
Roe happened because Norma McCorvey chose to go to court instead of simply traveling out of state to obtain an abortion.
Most courts in the US require that a plaintiff in a lawsuit be at risk of significant actual harm due to the law or precedent they’re suing to overturn. In the case of abortion rights lawsuits, this requires an actual pregnant woman to stand up in court in hopes of getting the law changed for herself and all women like her.
This is called “legal standing” and applies pretty much everywhere except the Supreme Court, which has suddenly and ahistorically decided that proper legal standing isn’t necessary, and anyone can be a plaintiff on a lawsuit that presents only hypothetical harms.
I wish that last paragraph was even remotely sarcastic.
Interesting and ultimately unfortunate that women need to be martyred so other women can have basic human rights because we can’t pass any law at a federal level protecting this
They’ve been making that illegal in these godawful states.
Maybe but if we have enough dying and suffering people making lawsuits, the US Supreme Court might, just maybe, consider overturning this ban? Isn’t that how justice is supposed to work?
You shouldnt have to die for justice