The Texas Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court order allowing an abortion for a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, hours after her lawyers said she had decided to leave Texas for the procedure in the face of the state’s abortion bans.
The court ruled that the lower court made a mistake in ruling that the woman, Kate Cox, who is more than 20 weeks pregnant, was entitled to a medical exception.
“These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice,” the court wrote.
“Judges do not have the authority to expand the statutory exception to reach abortions that do not fall within its text under the guise of interpreting it,” the Supreme Court found.
“Our ruling today does not block a lifesaving abortion in this very case if a physician determines that one is needed under the appropriate legal standard, using reasonable medical judgment,” the court added. “If Ms. Cox’s circumstances are, or have become, those that satisfy the statutory exception, no court order is needed.”
The court said in its unsigned opinion that a “good faith belief” by Damla Karsan, a doctor who sought to perform the abortion and sued alongside Cox, that the procedure was medically necessary was not enough to qualify for the state’s exception.
Instead, the court said, Karsan would need to determine in her “reasonable medical judgment” that Cox had a “life-threatening condition” and that an abortion was necessary to prevent her death or impairment of a major bodily function.
“The law leaves to physicians – not judges – both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient,” the court wrote.
Mrs. Cox left Texas for medical care outside of Texas “due to the ongoing deterioration” of her health.
