The Texas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled against 22 women who suffered complications during pregnancy who had sued the state over its near-total abortion ban.
Why it matters: The state Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s ruling that clarified when abortion exceptions for medical emergencies should be allowed.
Context: The lawsuit, originally filed in March 2023, didn’t seek to overturn Texas’s ban but only to clarify when medical exceptions are allowed under the law.
- Critics have said the ambiguity over when exceptions are allow has contributed to confusion among doctors — who can be charged with a first-degree felony if they violate the law.
- They have also argued the confusion and possibility of criminal liability endangers the lives of pregnant women, who could denied necessary and potentially life-saving abortions.
How it works: Texas’s ban, one of the strictest in the country, does not include exceptions for rape or incest.
- Under it, physicians can perform an abortion only if the pregnant person’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy “poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” The provider must also attempt to save the fetus.
- A state district court judge ruled last summer that the state could not prosecute doctors who terminated a complicated pregnancy in their “good faith judgment,” but the order was almost immediately blocked through an appeal by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
What’s inside: The Texas Supreme Court, which is comprised only of elected Republicans, ruled Friday that the lower court’s ruling was flawed because “all pregnancies carry risks.”
- “While merely being pregnant may increase a mother’s risk of death or injury, pregnancy itself is not a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ under the law,” the court said.
- “Because the trial court’s order opens the door to permit abortion to address any pregnancy risk, it is not a faithful interpretation of the law.”
Between the lines: The court kept in place the medical exception portion of the state’s ban, saying “Texas law permits a life-saving abortion.”
- However, it eliminated an attempt to clarify when a physical condition could kill or impair a pregnant woman.
- No matter how the court ruled on Friday, Texas’s ban would have remained in effect.
The big picture: The debate over what medical emergency merits legal abortion is occurring as infant and maternalmortalities have both spiked in Texas.