BREAKING:
MSNBC reporting Kate Cox, the pregnant woman from Texas, has left the state to have her procedure. It is obvious she can't wait for the courts, and travel is most likely even risky for her.
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"The central question is whether a lethal fetal anomaly qualifies a pregnant patient for an abortion under the narrow medical exception to the state's near-total abortion ban.
Cox's lawyers argue that continuing this nonviable pregnancy poses a threat to her life and future fertility, thus necessitating an abortion. "
"Emily Porter, M.D, criticized Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for saying that "nothing can restore the unborn child's life that will be lost as a result."
Newsweek sought email comment from Paxton's office on Saturday.
In response, Porter said: "The fetus has a 100% LETHAL chromosomal anomaly. The life was lost at fertilization. Paxton is trying to play God."
Ken Paxton issues threat after judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, can get an abortion
"In his appeal, Mr. Paxton urged the court to act and wrote that if an abortion was allowed, “Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result.”
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The fetus will not survive because trisomy 18 is invariably fatal.
In this case, the mother's health and life is at risk.
If she dies, nothing can restore her life that may be lost as a result of this absurd law.
This appalling situation demonstrates, once again, that abortion is medical care, like any other medical procedure, and the only people who should decide whether it is appropriate are the patient and her doctors.
What is served by this horrific, public, drawn-out process? What is served by delaying a medical procedure only to force judges to read up on multiple medical issues that the doctors already know inside-out? What is the purpose of Paxton's grandstanding? So that the judge can repeat the same conclusion that the doctors already came to -- that the fetus will not survive if born? That continuing the pregnancy only harms the mother and makes it more likely she will be unable to have another child?
Being born into pain only to die is not a fate anyone should wish on their worst enemy. Yet Paxton and other like him keep trying to visit this misery on the lives they claim they care about.
Leave women and their medical decisions the hell alone.
And be warned. It's not just medical abortions that the conservative lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere are after.
The radical fundamental religionists among them want to end Americans' right to safe contraception!
Supreme Court Decisions Recognizing the Right to Contraception
Currently, the right to contraception is protected by two landmark Supreme Court decisions, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972).
In Griswold, the Court recognized that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses the right of married people to obtain contraceptives. Prior to the Griswold decision, many states outlawed contraceptives, prohibiting clinicians from prescribing, or even discussing, contraceptive methods with their patients. After the Griswold decision, some states continued to have these prohibitions for single people, only allowing married women to obtain contraceptives.
These laws spurred the litigation that resulted in the High Court’s decision in Eisenstadt, where the Court extended the constitutional protections of Griswold to unmarried people.
30 comments:
"The 31-year-old has already been rushed to the ER four times, according to her attorneys, but doctors kept saying their hands were tied due to Texas’ stringent abortion ban, and sent her home. Under current law, health care providers in Texas face the threat of life in prison, a $100,000 fine, and loss of their medical license if they provide an abortion that appears to run afoul of the state’s dangerously ambiguous guidelines. On Thursday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to unleash all of these penalties against any doctor who helped Cox.
“Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans,” Duane wrote in a statement shared with Jezebel last Thursday. She further accused Paxton of “misrepresenting the court’s order” and “trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer.”
Make no mistake: Texas is an anti-woman, anti-mother state. Texas' AG Paxton's trial for securities fraud is set for April 15.
Tell me the difference between this and radical Islamn. The more i look at this the more it looks like that.
Hypocrites through and through.
4,500 kids are killed each year in Texas by guns. This is clearly not a state that values the lives of children. It's all about keeping women in their place as second-class citizens.
Thank goodness she decided to travel for the abortion. If she had stayed, she would have ended up as a human sacrifice offered up by ignorant barbarians lost in the darkness of medieval taboo and superstition. The men who rule Texas are gibbering primitives incapable of grasping the realities revealed by modern medicine, concerned only to reduce women to slaves and blood offerings on the altar of the dark and savage god conjured from the fever dreams of their sputtering, rotted-out brains.
Don't care.
As for the federal effort to enshrine into law contraception, this all traces back to SCOTUS Justice Thomas and his ally Alito.
In the decision striking down Roe, Thomas footnoted his view, seconded by Alito, that there is "no right to privacy" in the US Constitution. That right was understood to give a family personal rights within their home. As such, a woman had a right to purchase and use contraceptives if she so chose.
That decision, known as Griswold, was the basis for the Loving decision, making interracial marriage in the US, legal. Those two decisions together, were the basis of Roe, which the court struck down.
Those three decisions, including Roe, were then the basis of Obergefell, making gay marriage legal.
Conservatives [Dems originally, but the GOP now] of course opposed all of these decisions.
Now we have conservatives in Texas, our biggest GOP supporting state, threatening to send doctors and hospital administrators to jail for preforming an abortion.
We also have the Texas state GOP rejecting a ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers. And trying to keep the vote secret so people would not be able to see what they voted for.
And we have GOP aligned Texas Historical Commission barring books about former Texas slave plantations selling specific books at the plantation gift shops because they focus "too much on the slaves and not enough on the slave owners."
How should America think about this crowd?
Are these views extreme? Sadly, many conservatives say no. They say no with their silence and their refusal to even consider calling out their beloved MAGA GOP because they are blind partisans.
What can we do Shaw?
-FJ "Don't care"
That's exactly what we want to hear from the radical fundamentalist religionists -- "Don't care!"
That way, they'll stay out of other people's -- especially women's -- personal, medical decisions!
You've made the right choice in not caring about a woman's private decision that has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU.
If only the wretched AG of Texas and other anti-women lawmakers could learn to do the same.
-FJ, of course you don't.
But imagine if you had a wife, daughter or grand daughter in this situation.
Would you care then?
You may wish to defend your views from a rugged individualism standpoint, but in reality, it's more rooted in angry selfishness.
Infidel753 I couldn't have expressed it better than that.
I wonder what that radical AG in Texas will do when Mrs. Cox returns to Texas after deciding to save her life and her ability to have other children.
We have not seen the end of Paxton's and Texas's depravities toward women.
Anonymous
Good point. And most people can see through Paxton's and Texas's fraudulent concern for the life of babies and children. It's all performative politics so that they can hang onto power.
I hope the women of Texas understand what this horrific ordeal for Mrs. Cox means for them.
Les The world is looking at Texas and other anti-abortion states and wondering what the hell happened to this supposedly advanced society.
State forced pregnancies are as bad as state forced abortions.
What happened to "small government" that the conservatives always shout about? It seems like those small-government conservatives are okay with monitoring pregnancies of all the girls and women in their states. What a horror!
I thank Darwin that I live in Massachusetts!
Dave M.
We've seen what the women have voted in Red states where the question of keeping abortion rights legal was on a referendum. Majorities in those RED states ALL support keeping abortion safe and legal.
70% of the American people support a girl's and woman's right to choose.
This case in Texas shows what happens when the state tries to choose for women. The state and their medically ignorant officers would put a girl or woman's life (and her ability to have more children) in jeopardy because they do not trust her and her doctors to do the right thing FOR HER in medical emergencies like this.
It is difficult to believe that we as a nation can witness and allow these sort of miseries endured by women and girls in the 21st century in one of the most advanced societies in the world.
I agree with this woman who wrote about Kate Cox and her ordeal and suffering brought about by Texas politicians:
"We are vested in the well being of Mrs. Cox and all the women who can not get out of these GOP states fast enough. We attempt to put ourselves in her shoes and no the emotional upheaval her entire family has had to endure along with the knowing that her fetus had no chance.
Those emotions will never be forgotten our humanity has been on trial with Mrs. Cox, we will never forget how when they came for Mrs. Cox they came for all of us."
end
Center for Reproductive Rights:
“This past week of legal limbo has been hellish for Kate. Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer. This is why judges and politicians should not be making healthcare decisions for pregnant people.
"This is the result of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade: women are forced to beg for urgent healthcare in court. Kate's case has shown the world that abortion bans are dangerous for pregnant people, and exceptions don’t work."
"Kate desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family. While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.” -Nancy Northup, President & CEO
end
This reads not so much as a news story as it does a prologue to a dystopian novel
Why would any professional— anyone with a choice — decide to live in Texas today?
Why would anyone choose to go to school there?
It has become a hellscape.
God help Kate Cox and her sisters🙏
Mark Nickerson
This is important for everyone to understand. This repressive law is unconstitutional and demonstrates why the Supreme Court was wrong when they sent this subject back to the states. This woman should have our nation’s best lawyers and they should sue every member of the state’s legislature, the Governor, the Attorney General , Trump and the Supreme Court. Accountability must be made, these people are guilty of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment in their arrogance of creating and allowing a law that so demonstrably violates this woman’s constitutional protections.
Paula asked... "Why would any professional— anyone with a choice — decide to live in Texas today?"
Great question... here's the answer as I understand it.
Texas, if you lean conservative, is a mostly live and let live state. Live life as a conservative, don't shoot people, vote reliably red and support low taxes because they're not providing a bunch of services, chances are you'll love Texas.
Housing can be pretty cheap, the BBQ is fantastic and churches are plentiful.
@Dave - Employees from the phone company had to move to Texas in 1998. The Texas lovers bragged about no state income tax. BUT, in Missouri, their real estate taxes were around $4000. For basically the same house in Texas the real estate taxes were $8000. I talked to people who had to move there and they said after all was said and done the total taxes were about the same.
@Shaw - Isn't there some law in Texas that lets anyone sue someone who has an abortion for any reason?
There is absolutely no justification for politicians to make uneducated decisions about girls' and women's health.
Mike
I don't know. I'll see if I can find out.
I found this:
A number of new ordinances in TX counties/cities make it illegal to transport anyone to get an abortion on roads within the city or county limits.
Antiabortion advocates behind the measure are targeting regions along interstates and in areas with airports, with the goal of blocking off the main arteries out of Texas and keeping pregnant women hemmed within the confines of their antiabortion state. These provisions have already passed in two counties and two cities, creating legal risk for those traveling on major highways including Interstate 20 and Route 84, which head toward New Mexico, where abortion remains legal and new clinics have opened to accommodate Texas women."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/01/texas-abortion-highways/
It's unbelievable that this is happening in the United States of America!
Rev, You nailed it on why live in TEXAS. You did forget that no matter where in the world you are and someone asks where you are from and you say TEXAS, no one says wheres that. Also there are lush parts and desert parts, ocean front property and great cultural centers.
Unfortunately it is such a great place to live that people from all over are moving there especially california which is changing the political landscape. And in answer to mike yes RE taxes are high and it depends on your income if it is a wash with places like missouri.
skud Rev, You nailed it on why live in TEXAS. You did forget that no matter where in the world you are and someone asks where you are from and you say TEXAS, no one says wheres that.
Yeah. Well everyone knows where Afghanistan is too, and they don't have to say, "Where's that?"
Perhaps the Californians moving to Texas will change the political landscape so that girls and women will not fear for their lives should they decide to become pregnant.
Men have no idea about all the possible things that can go wrong in a pregnancy. Personally, I know this. And I thank Darwin that the lawmakers in Massachusetts follow the medical science and NOT a religious dogma in making laws so that women don't have to leave the state to save their lives.
Texas is a big state for sure. It is also hostile to girls, women, and children. Who'd want to raise a healthy family there now?
But imagine if you had a wife, daughter or grand daughter in this situation.
Would you care then?
They don't live in Texas, and I believe in federalism.
Oh, that's right. Busybodies believe in the United STATE of America. States have no rights.
Texas is certainly not a state of seekers or enlightened people. Preferring to leave thinking to the statists Christian Nationalists and authoritarian religionists to do their thinking for them.
If Texas tries to leave the union again we should open the door wide open for them to do so.
Ms. Shaw, Afghanistan is a country and TEXAS is a state in the country of the United States. There is a difference. People who live in TEXAS can afford to own a home and still feed their family. This is not something that can be done in many states including some in the colonies.
The democrats have established a great advantage by getting a women to give her all for the party. the democrats will forget all about her once she has served her purpose much like ford. It is easy say a whole state is hostile to women but that is like saying NYC is hostile to Jews which is a generalization that cannot be proved to be widespread.
Texas does have some issues the biggest one is illegal crossings caused by biden's refusal to govern for the American people. That is far more of an issue than allowing a women to have an abortion. They don't allow it but other states do which is the point to states rights.
Folks, as it relates to ppl moving from CA to TX, that's not the progressive crowd. CA is a big state and for awhile, it had a moderate streak. Think Govs Reagan and Arnold as well as Senators Hayakawa and Wilson. But no longer.
So GOP lovers are leaving the state and heading to solid red Idaho and Texas.
So I'm not sure how much political baggage TX is receiving from The Golden State.
-FJ "They don't live in Texas, and I believe in federalism.
"Oh, that's right. Busybodies believe in the United STATE of America. States have no rights."
Neither one of those comments addresses the fact that the state of Texas has taken gynecological and obstetric medicine out of the hands of medical doctors and put it in the hands of politicians and judges.
No matter what you or the people who approve of this madness have to say, it is WRONG. You cannot construct an argument that has this insanity make any sense.
The laws that Texas and other conservative states enacted are laws based on certain religions -- mostly Christian, I would guess, since Judaism does NOT prohibit abortion. here There is widespread agreement among scholars and rabbinical authorities that a complete prohibition on abortion is inconsistent with Jewish law and tradition. Under Jewish law, an abortion to save the life of the mother is permitted. Other Protestant sects do not prohibit abortion, also, there are non-religious people in this country who have had their choices taken away from them by a prejudiced state.
Again, I repeat that this has nothing to do with the sanctity of life, since Texas has the worst, or one of the worst records for children dying from firearm deaths and a state with some of the laxest gun laws in the country. And those laws are contributing to the deaths of born children.
@pShaw - Don't like Texas? Don't go there.
-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...
@pShaw - Don't like Texas? Don't go there.
Inane.
-FJ cannot construct an argument, so he posts juvenile one-liners.
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