USA – Confusing abortion bans hurt patients. But there’s a cost to making them clearer.

What the debate over “clarification” laws reveals about America three years out from Roe.

by Rachel Cohen Booth
Jul 1, 2025

By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida’s new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/abortion/418140/abortion-bans-clarification-texas-tennessee-kentucky-reproductive-rights-roe

Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications

Center for Reproductive Rights
May 31, 2024

Today the Texas Supreme Court denied claims brought by 20 women denied abortion care despite facing dangerous pregnancy complications and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion bans.

The ruling in the high-profile case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, left physicians without clarity about the circumstances under which they can use their own medical judgement to provide abortion care without fear of prosecution.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/zurawski-v-texas-ruling-texas-supreme-court/

USA – What It Takes to Claw Back Abortion Rights in Court

Feb 19, 2024
By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut

Any day now, the Texas Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on Zurawski v. State of Texas, the first-of-its-kind legal challenge brought forward last year by 20 women who say that they were denied abortion care in the face of severe and dangerous pregnancy complications. The case seeks to clarify what circumstances qualify as medical emergencies under the state’s three overlapping abortion bans, which threaten providers with up to life in prison, in addition to a civil penalty of no less than $100,000.

Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, came up with the case’s legal strategy and has since filed similar lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee. … “Brittany Watts, Kate Cox — these are not isolated incidents,” she says. “The cruelty, the confusion, the absolute terror that is pervasive throughout the medical community and is impacting patients every single day, all that was by design.” I talked to Duane about the reasoning behind this focus on medical exceptions and the long game that is trying to claw back some abortion rights through the courts.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/zurawski-v-texas-and-clawing-back-abortion-rights-in-court.html

Texas mother Kate Cox on the outcome of her legal fight for an abortion: “It was crushing”

By Tracy Smith
January 14, 2024
Video: 8:32 minutes

Lifelong Texans Kate and Justin Cox were already parents to a young girl and boy when they found out last August that Kate was pregnant again. "We have the two children that we absolutely adore, and yeah, the thought of having a third one added to the family was incredible," Justin said.

But a series of tests revealed the baby they were expecting, a girl, had trisomy 18, a genetic condition that causes severe developmental problems.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-on-her-legal-fight-for-abortion-trisomy-18/

14.01.2024

Videos/Images

Center for Reproductive Rights

Kate Cox on her struggle to obtain an abortion in Texas

January 12, 2024
CBS News

Kate Cox was pregnant with her third child when she learned the baby had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18. Cox and her husband, Justin, were informed by their doctors that if their child survived the pregnancy, her life expectancy would be at best a week. With the baby's health at risk as well as her own, Kate and Justin Cox sued the state of Texas for the right to have an abortion.

In her first interview since the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, Cox talks about the case, her decision to have an abortion in New Mexico, and more in an interview with Tracy Smith for "CBS News Sunday Morning," to be broadcast Sunday, January 14 on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-interview-on-her-struggle-to-obtain-an-abortion-in-texas/

12.01.2024

Interviews/Podcasts

Center for Reproductive Rights

‘Jane Roe’ is anonymous no more. The very public fight against abortion bans in 2023

By Selena Simmons-Duffin, Sarah McCammon, NPR
December 26, 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, so too does the first full year of the post-Roe era in America. Some of the year's developments were expected, like more conservative states enacting abortion restrictions. Others were surprising, like the fact that there were more abortions nationally in the year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision than the previous one.

In the final weeks of the year, the country followed the story of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two in Texas, as she sought to end a tragic pregnancy to ensure she could have a future one.
Here is the state of play when it comes to abortion heading into 2024.

Continued: https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/npr-news/2023-12-26/jane-roe-is-anonymous-no-more-the-very-public-fight-against-abortion-bans-in-2023

26.12.2023

#WeCount

Center for Reproductive Rights

Society of Family Planning

Ushma Upadhyay

WeCount

Some state abortion bans stir confusion, and it’s uncertain if lawmakers will clarify them

BY KIMBERLEE KRUESI AND GEOFF MULVIHILL
December 20, 2023

Ever since the nation’s highest court ended abortion rights more than a year ago, vaguely worded bans enacted in some Republican-controlled states have caused bewilderment over how exceptions should be applied.

Supporters have touted these exemptions, tucked inside statutes restricting abortion, as sufficient enough to protect the life of the woman. Yet repeatedly, when applied in heart-wrenching situations, the results are much murkier.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-exception-lawsuit-legislature-confusion-b2808df90937e96887aa4e1f9c565771

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

Abortion Ruling Keeps Texas Doctors Afraid of Prosecution

In ruling that a pregnant woman did not qualify for a medical exception to abortion bans, the Texas Supreme Court left doctors without clear guidance on which cases might pass legal muster.

By J. David Goodman
Dec. 13, 2023

Texas doctors, women and lawyers have been asking the state for nearly two years to clarify what is and what is not allowed under strict, overlapping abortion bans. Lawmakers passed a bill this year that makes some exceptions to the bans clearer, but it wasn’t enough to help doctors decide whether they could legally give a Dallas woman, Kate Cox, an abortion.

Ms. Cox sought permission to end her pregnancy after she learned that her fetus had a fatal genetic condition. A district court judge said she qualified for a medical exception to the bans, but the Texas Supreme Court overturned that decision this week.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/texas-abortion-doctor-prosecution.html

Texas Supreme Court rules against woman who sought abortion hours after she says she’ll travel out of state

A state district judge granted the request last week, but the Texas Supreme Court directed the lower court to vacate its order Monday.

Dec. 11, 2023
By Daniella Silva and Aria Bendix

A Texas woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis and who was awaiting a decision from the Texas Supreme Court about whether she would be allowed to get an abortion said Monday that she has decided to leave Texas to get the procedure.

Kate Cox, a mother of two who is around 20 weeks pregnant, found out just after Thanksgiving that her developing fetus has trisomy 18, a fatal diagnosis. Seeking to terminate the pregnancy to protect her health and future fertility, she and her husband sought a court order to block Texas’ abortion bans from applying in her case.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-woman-sought-abortion-court-order-leave-state-rcna129087