Court grants Texas woman's request for emergency abortion in historic ruling

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A judge granted a Texas woman's request for an abortion for a pregnancy with a severe anomaly on Thursday.

The woman, Kate Cox, had filed a lawsuit against the state over its restrictive abortion bans, asking a judge to grant her a temporary restraining order that would allow her to get an abortion.

"The idea that Miss Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking, and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice," Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, a Democrat elected to the bench, said Thursday.

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Cox is currently carrying a pregnancy with virtually no chance the baby -- who has trisomy 18 -- will survive to birth or long afterward. She's said she has been denied the safest form of abortion care for her -- a dilation and evacuation procedure. The CRR would not disclose when or where Cox plans to obtain her abortion care due to safety concerns.

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Cox said she "desperately" wants a chance to have another baby and grow her family.


"I'm a Texan. I love Texas. I'm raising my children here. I was raised here. I've built my academic career, my professional career here. You know, I plan to stay. And so I want to be able to get access to the medical care that I need, and my daughter to have it as well," Cox said.

Johnathan Stone, with the Texas Attorney General's Office, argued in court that Cox hadn't proved she would suffer "immediate and irreparable injury" and suggested that a subsequent hearing be allowed with more evidence.

He said under state law doctors can use "reasonable medical judgement" in providing an emergency abortion to protect a woman's life at risk, but that it didn't appear Cox met that definition.

Molly Duane, Cox's attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that standard is impossible to meet without harming a woman.

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