The Texas abortion ban is not “sick enough” to get your doctor’s license: a high court ruling on Cox’s decision to leave the state
In April, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals partially overruled Kacsmaryk, which allowed Mife to stay on the market but ended the ability to receive the medication by mail. At the request of the Biden administration, the Supreme Court ordered a stay on the case. The virtual abortion clinics would have been forced to change how they operated had this purchase not been made. Clinics have decided to offer a one- pill regime of abortion.
Since 2000, the government says the drug is safe and effective. In its brief, the government says the FDA has “maintained that scientific judgment across five presidential administrations, while updating the drug’s approved conditions of use based on additional evidence and experience,” including the over five million patients who have taken it.
On Monday, Cox made the decision to leave the state to get the procedure. A few hours later, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her and sided with Paxton.
In court and in legal filings, Paxton’s office has repeatedly argued that women with life-threatening pregnancies who did not get appropriate care in Texas can and should sue their doctors for malpractice.
At the same time, all of Texas’s abortion laws target doctors who perform abortions with penalties. Life in prison, fines of $100,000 and revocation of their medical license are the punishments imposed on doctors.
In the two years since the abortion ban in Texas was enacted, the attorney general and state officials have not said a word. They have refused to tell anyone what the exception means,” Duane says.
People who help women get abortions can also be held liable under one of those three laws, S.B. 8, which says anyone can sue a person for helping someone get an abortion. A person who drives their wife to the hospital for an illegal abortion in Texas could be sued by anyone anywhere. This is why Kate’s husband Justin Cox was also named in the petition – Duane says it was to protect him against this provision of S.B. 8.
Although the Texas high court knew Cox was leaving the state, it didn’t dismiss the case. Its seven-page opinion puts responsibility for these highly consequential choices on doctors.
Cox was not “sick enough” to get the attention of the Texas justices. “That should be truly chilling because it means, I think, that the exception doesn’t exist at all.” If she doesn’t get it, who do you think gets it?
Cox did not want to travel, as she wrote in an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News last week: “I am a Texan. Why should I or any other woman have to drive or fly hundreds of miles to do what we feel is best for ourselves and our families, to determine our own futures?”
Lawyers and her doctor said that the future fertility of her was at risk. Does it count as a major bodily function? If Cox had the abortion, would her doctor, husband and husband be safe? The Center for Reproductive Rights filed an emergency petition on Cox’s behalf requesting that the abortion ban be suspended so she could have an abortion in Texas.
Kate Cox lives with her husband and two young kids in the Dallas area. Her fetus has a genetic condition that is so rare that it has no chance of survival about 20 weeks into her third pregnancy. She went to the emergency room three times in two weeks because of her severe symptoms and also suffered from chlamydia.
Telemedicine, abortions, and the era of reproductive health care: The most consequential case for access to reproductive health care since Roe v. Wade
This will be the most consequential case for access to reproductive health care since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Many patients were willing to pay for abortions after the decision of the Supreme Court, so telehealth providers were able to send abortion pills by mail. Pills are now the most common abortion method in the US; curtailing the availability of medication abortion would be a major blow to reproductive health care.