The Texas Democratic Party will meet in El Paso this weekend, and the party says the platform it adopts will include a call to allow abortion. After the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022, a law was triggered in Texas forbidding almost all abortions.
A group of women who had complications during their pregnancies sued to block the law. Friday, the Texas Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold the measure.
"Texas law permits a life-saving abortion. A physician cannot be fined or disciplined for performing an abortion when the physician, exercising reasonable medical judgment, concludes (1) a pregnant woman has a life-threatening physical condition, and (2) that condition poses a risk of death or serious physical impairment unless an abortion is performed," justices wrote in the ruling.
Last year, a lower court granted an injunction to stop Texas from enforcing the law. The injunction was then blocked by the appeal to the State Supreme Court.
In its ruling Friday, the Texas Supreme Court said plaintiffs did not show the exception to the abortion ban is narrower than the state's constitution allows.
"A physician who tells a patient, 'Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,' and in the same breath states 'but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these
circumstances' is simply wrong in that legal assessment," they wrote.
Texas Democrats say they will include abortion access in their party platform when they meet in El Paso this weekend.
"There are a group of 'MAGA' extremists hell-bent on stripping away women's rights," says Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa. "All of their talk of being the party of freedom is hogwash."
Democrats cited the case of Lauren Miller who says she was pregnant with twins two years ago. She says she wanted the children, but she was increasingly sick.
At an ultrasound, she said her doctor found one twin was fine, but another was not developing.
"After speaking with multiple doctors and genetic counselors, we kept arriving at the same point: Our son would die. It was just a matter of how soon," she says. "But as my medical providers tried to counsel me on my options, they would stop mid-sentence looking for the right words. It was like they were afraid they would be arrested just for saying the word, 'abortion,' out loud."
She says one provider "tore off his gloves in frustration" and said he could not help her. She says he told her she would need to leave the state.
"The worst part of finding out we would lose our son should not have been scrambling to make plans to travel out of state for an abortion just to ensure our healthy twin and I had a chance of surviving the pregnancy," Miller says.
Texas law creates a first degree felony for a doctor who successfully carries out an abortion with a potential sentence of life in prison and $10,000 fine.
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