Austin, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States, following a lawsuit filed by women who had serious pregnancy complications.
The unanimous decision by the court, whose nine justices are all elected Republicans, is the latest decision to uphold Texas’ abortion ban, which critics say does not provide enough clarity about when exceptions are allowed.
The court said that the exceptions, as written, are broad enough and that doctors would be misinterpreting the law if they refused to perform an abortion when the mother’s life was in danger.
“Texas law permits life-saving abortion,” the court wrote in the order signed by Republican Justice Jane Bland.
Last summer, state District Judge Jessica Mangrum granted a preliminary injunction that prevented Texas from enforcing the ban against doctors who, in their “good faith judgment,” terminated a pregnancy they deemed unsafe due to complications. But that was immediately blocked by an appeal from the Texas attorney general’s office to the state Supreme Court.
More than 20 women in Texas joined the lawsuit, including Amanda Zurawski, who was told she had an illness that meant her baby would not survive. The Austin woman said she was forced to wait until she was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of sepsis before having an abortion.
“I am outraged on behalf of my fellow plaintiffs who the Court found were not sick enough,” Zurawski said in a statement after the ruling. “We all deserve bodily autonomy. It’s sick and wrong.”
The lawsuit filed in March 2023 did not seek to overturn Texas’ abortion ban, but rather to force more clarity on when exceptions are allowed.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office defended the law in the case, applauded the decision.
“I will continue to uphold the laws enacted by the Legislature and uphold the values of the people of Texas by doing everything in my power to protect mothers and babies,” Paxton posted on X.
The lawsuit argued that the law’s exemptions, which allow an abortion to save the mother’s life or prevent impairment of a major bodily function, are too vaguely written and create confusion among doctors, who were turning away some pregnant women with health complications because they feared repercussions.
The plaintiffs said the abortion ban has made medical professionals wary of facing liability if the state does not consider the situation a medical emergency.
But the Texas Supreme Court also declined to offer clarity on the exemptions late last year after Kate Cox, a Dallas mother of two, sued the state for the right to have an abortion after her fetus developed a fatal illness. and she made several trips to an emergency room. Cox ended up leaving the state to have an abortion before the court ruled that she had not demonstrated that her life was in danger. The court asked the state medical board to provide further guidance.
The medical board’s proposed guidelines, released earlier this year, offered little beyond advising doctors to meticulously document their decision-making. And Texas’ Republican-led Legislature is not expected to make any changes to the law’s language.
Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the case, spent three days in intensive care and was left with a permanently closed fallopian tube due to an infection, affecting her ability to have more children.
The court ruled that state law does not require that a woman’s death or serious disability be “imminent” when she is evaluated by a doctor for an abortion.
“EM. Zurawski’s agonizing wait to get ‘sick enough’ for induction, the development of sepsis, and his permanent physical injuries are not the results the law mandates,” the court wrote.
Under Texas law, doctors who perform abortions risk life in prison, fines of up to $100,000 and revocation of their state medical licenses. Opponents say this has left some women with providers who are unwilling to even discuss terminating the pregnancy.
Most Republican-controlled states have begun imposing new bans or restrictions on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade, who for almost 50 years affirmed the constitutional right to abortion.
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Stengle reported from Dallas. Associated Press reporter Jim Vertuno contributed from Austin.
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