Texas Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Woman From Receiving Abortion

Topline

The Texas state Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a state court ruling allowing a Dallas woman to receive an emergency abortion, after a state judge ruled earlier this week she could obtain the procedure due to doctors’ warnings that giving birth would present health complications, putting the state’s strict abortion ban to the test in the fallout of the U.S. Supreme Court’s momentous decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the state’s Supreme Court to intervene in a case to prevent … [+] a Dallas woman from receiving an abortion.

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Key Facts

A Travis County judge on Thursday had granted a temporary restraining order to allow 31-year-old Kate Cox to receive an abortion, two days after she sued the state in an effort to allow her to have an emergency abortion.

The state’s abortion ban prohibits all abortions except in cases of medical emergencies that put a mother at risk of “substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.”

Cox, in her suit, said her doctors told her going through with the pregnancy would put her at “high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility.”

On Friday, Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the state’s high court to seek to block that order, while hours later the state Supreme Court issued an order to stay the district court’s order, pending “further order of the court.”

Key Background

Texas was one of 13 states whose abortion ban came into effect as a trigger law immediately after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 Dobbs decision last year, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that had been protected federally since the court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. In its Dobbs ruling, the court left the decision of abortion access up to individual states, leading to nearly two dozen states implementing laws banning abortions either completely or between six and 18 weeks of a mother’s pregnancy.

Tangent

A woman in Kentucky and Planned Parenthood filed a class action suit Friday challenging the state’s ban on abortion, with the woman—listed anonymously as Jane Doe—alleging Kentucky’s government is “interfering in my private matters and blocking me from having an abortion.” Kentucky’s ban prohibits abortions in almost all circumstances unless a mother’s life is in danger.