Why Did Texas Resident Kate Cox Go To Court to Seek an Abortion When it’s Legal to Obtain an Abortion in the State if the Pregnancy is Life Threatening?

Texas' Supreme Court on Monday ruled against a woman who sued for an emergency abortionin her home state, overturning a lower court’s ruling last week.

Kate Cox, 31, filed a lawsuit after she said she was denied an abortion for a pregnancy with a severe anomaly.

Only in the State of Texas, a pregnant woman does not need a court order to have a lifesaving abortion. So why is it that Ms.Cox went to court to attempt to get one if her doctor ruled out that the pregnancy could cause loss of life?

The Texas Supreme Court ruling does not block a life-saving abortion in this very case if a physician determines that one is needed under the appropriate legal standard, using reasonable medical judgment.

If Ms. Cox's circumstances are, or have become, those that satisfy the statutory exception, no court order is needed.

Nothing in the Texas Supreme Court opinion prevents a physician from acting if, in that physician's reasonable medical judgment, she determines that Ms. Cox has a "life-threatening physical condition" that places her "at risk of death" or “poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced."

Interestingly, many Texas progressives and commentators have jumped in to this argument, seemingly unaware that the rules in Texas allow a women to get an abortion if the pregnancy can be life threatening.

More deceptive headlines from the Houston Chronicle Taylor Goldstein