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