The suit was filed on Monday in Travis County, asking the county court “for a declaratory judgment clarifying the scope of Texas’s Emergent Medical Condition Exception to its abortion bans, and any and all declaratory or injunctive relief necessary to protect the health and lives of pregnant Texans with emergent medical conditions.”
Each of the five women describe medical situations in which their pregnancy should have been aborted, but the attending doctor was afraid to do so for fear of violating the state ban on abortions, which carries a 99-year prison sentence. These included premature rupturing of membranes, the death of one of two twins, diagnosis with an “incompetent cervix,” and diagnosis with hyperemesis gravidarum - all of which required termination of the pregnancy in order to treat.
"I cannot adequately put into words the trauma and despair that come with waiting to either lose your own life, your child’s life, or both," one of the women, Amanda Zurawski, said at a press event in front of the Texas state capitol on Tuesday.
They and “countless other pregnant people have been denied necessary and potentially life-saving obstetrical care because medical professionals throughout the state fear liability under Texas’s abortion bans,” the suit says.
“Yet with the threat of losing their medical licenses, fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and up to 99 years in prison lingering over their heads, it is no wonder that doctors and hospitals are turning patients away - even patients in medical emergencies,” it adds.
A spokesperson for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told US media he would "continue to defend and enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas legislature,” pointing to statements by Paxton’s office last July that the law "protects women facing life-threatening physical conditions resulting from pregnancy complications."
Texas has long been an important battleground in the fight over abortion access, with Democrats fighting a largely rear-guard action in the courts against the Republican-dominated legislature, which succeeded in limiting abortions to just five weeks after conception, when most women and pregnant people don’t even know they are pregnant yet. However, the final stroke came last June, when the US Supreme Court overturned its previous decision in Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal protections for abortion access.
That decision set in motion a series of “trigger laws,” or state-level bans passed years ago that only activated once the Supreme Court issued its fateful ruling. Texas was one of them; it was also one of several states with a pre-Roe abortion ban still on the books, which also reactivated.