What It’s Really Like to Challenge Texas’ Absurd Abortion Laws

The government won’t admit what it’s actually doing.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
DEC 18, 2023
(1-hour podcast, partial transcript)

… Last summer, Amanda Zurawski and a number of plaintiffs sued to have Texas clarify its inscrutable and malleable “exception” rule, that, as it currently stands, does not seem to allow many exceptions at all, and instead threatens all abortion providers with losing their licenses, paying extortionate fines, and going to prison for 99 years if they help their clients access such care. That case went to the Texas Supreme Court on the same day Kate Cox learned that her baby would die of trisomy 18, the week before the Texas courts forced her to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy.

On Amicus this week, Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in that ongoing Texas lawsuit, and one of her lawyers, Jamie Levitt, of Morrison and Foerster, who joined with the Center for Reproductive Rights to protect the rights of women in Texas, joined the show. Our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, follows.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/amanda-zurawski-on-challenging-texas-abortion-law.html

Meet 18 women who shared heartbreaking pregnancy journeys in post-Roe world

On the Brink: Women detail impact of abortion restrictions on their health care.

By Nadine El-Bawab, Tess Scott, Christina Ng, and Acacia Nunes
December 16, 2023

…In a monthslong investigation, 18 women from across 10 states shared their deeply personal stories, chronicling their heartbreaking journeys and how, in some cases, they were brought to the brink of death because they couldn't access timely care in their home states.

The women appeared in a companion broadcast, "Impact by Nightline: On the Brink," with exclusive interviews by Diane Sawyer and Rachel Scott, which looks at the hidden health care crisis playing out in clinics and exam rooms across the country. So many families posing the question: is this what lawmakers intended? "On the Brink" premieres Dec. 14 on Hulu.

These are their stories.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/meet-18-women-shared-heartbreaking-pregnancy-journeys-post/story?id=105563366

Texas Supreme Court heavily scrutinizes both sides in case challenging abortion bans

Bayliss Wagner, Austin American-Statesman
Nov 29, 2023

Texas' highest court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that will decide whether medical exceptions to Texas abortion bans are written clearly enough to protect women who face serious health risks during pregnancy.

The 22 plaintiffs in the case include several women forced to wait until they were sick with sepsis, a life-threatening condition, to terminate pregnancies that premature ruptures of membrane had already rendered nonviable; two women who traversed hundreds of miles for abortions of a nonviable twin to protect their and their healthy babies' lives; and a woman forced to carry a nonviable pregnancy to term, then watch her baby's skin turn purple and her eyeballs bleed as she slowly suffocated to death.

Continued: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2023/11/29/texas-supreme-court-hears-case-challenging-texas-abortion-bans-health-risks-pregnancy-women/71727577007/

Woman travels to New Mexico for abortion care not offered to her in Texas, joins suit

Kimberly Manzano is one of seven women who joined a suit over Texas' bans.
By Nadine El-Bawab and Mary Kekatos

November 16, 2023

After moving to Texas and getting engaged, Kimberly Manzano, 34, and her now-husband, 35, started trying to get pregnant in April 2022, hoping to share happy news with their friends and family at their wedding just a few months later.

Although the couple didn't find out they were pregnant until November 2022 -- two months after their wedding -- Manzano said they were excited. That excitement turned to devastation not long after when she suffered a miscarriage.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-travels-new-mexico-abortion-care-offered-texas/story?id=104924852

16.11.2023

Center for Reproductive Rights

In post-Roe Texas, 2 mothers with traumatic pregnancies walk very different paths

July 4, 2023
Selena Simmons-Duffin

The funeral did not go as Samantha Casiano had hoped — she did not get an open casket for the baby she named Halo.

"I was super-heartbroken," Casiano tells NPR. "It's the last time I was going to be able to see my daughter. It would have been the first time that a lot of my family members were able to see her."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/04/1185904719/texas-abortion-bans-dobbs-fetal-anomaly

Days of desperation: the diary of a woman forced to flee Texas for an abortion

Lauren Miller’s fetus had fatal brain abnormalities. Her pregnancy threatened her life, and that of her twin boy. Now, she is one of 15 women suing the state

by Lauren Miller, with introduction by Poppy Noor
Mon 19 Jun 2023

Below is the journal of Lauren Miller, 36, a Texan who unexpectedly found herself needing abortion care shortly after Roe v Wade was overturned one year ago. When she first started writing the diary, Miller had no idea of the obstacles she was about to face. Now, she is suing the state of Texas with the Center for Reproductive Rights alongside 14 other plaintiffs for being denied access to life-saving abortion care.

Miller came to the Guardian wanting to publish the journal – a real-time diary of the twists and turns of going from discovering a very wanted pregnancy, to navigating the need for a termination in a state where abortion is now banned. It has been edited and condensed.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/19/diary-woman-fled-texas-for-abortion

19.06.2023

Commentary

Interviews/Podcasts

fatal fetal abnormality

Tragedies mount for women with ill-fated pregnancies under Texas’ abortion bans

Bridget Grumet, Austin American-Statesman
May 24, 2023

Life took a wrenching twist for Jessica Bernardo last fall. She went from being an elated, expectant mother — listening to audiobooks about pregnancy, teasing her husband about installing child safety gates on the stairs of their Frisco home — to using a private browser on her computer to search for an abortion.

Bernardo desperately wanted the child she named Emma. About 15 weeks into the pregnancy, though, doctors said the child had severe medical conditions and would not survive to birth.

Continued: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/columns/2023/05/24/grumet-texas-abortion-bans-inflict-growing-toll-expectant-mothers/70248396007/

USA – You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative

May 22, 2023
By Michelle Goldberg

It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there has been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies.

Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing. Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement for spooking doctors into not intervening when pregnancies go horribly wrong. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html

8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger

The original lawsuit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March.

By Nadine El-Bawab
May 22, 2023

The Center for Reproductive Rights is expected to add eight more women to a lawsuit it filed against Texas over its abortion ban, claiming their lives were put at risk due to the law. This brings the total number of plaintiffs to 15.

The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/8-women-join-suit-texas-abortion-bans-claim/story?id=99480988

In the Post-Roe Era, Letting Pregnant Patients Get Sicker—by Design

Fearing legal repercussions, doctors in Texas say they are risking grave patient harm to comply with new abortion restrictions.

By Stephania Taladrid
May 6, 2023

Parkland Memorial Hospital is an elegantly landscaped, blue-glass facility gleaming in the concrete expanse of what was once a manufacturing district in Dallas. The sole public hospital in a city of nearly 1.3 million people, it’s also a beacon in the state. People in medical distress travel to see its doctors from rural towns hundreds of miles away, and some of those distressed patients are pregnant.

Half of the counties in Texas, according to state data, lack a single specialist in women’s health: no ob-gyn, no nurse, no midwife who can treat mothers and their babies. But Parkland, one of thirty-two hospitals credentialled to treat high-risk-pregnancy cases, takes all comers. More than ten thousand babies are born there every year, and pregnant people also show up in its hectic emergency room with conditions that threaten their lives. Some patients have hemorrhages and spiralling infections; some are critically ill with cancer or heart disease; some are at acute risk of stroke if they bring their pregnancies to term.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-the-post-roe-era-letting-pregnant-patients-get-sicker-by-design