Don't move to Texas
Here’s one for a bright and sunny Saturday. A woman in Texas, Kate Cox, whose unborn baby has been diagnosed with trisomy 18, which is fatal to the fetus and can be dangerous and even fatal to the mother in most if not all cases, sued to get a Texas judge to allow her to get an abortion. Cox is 20 weeks pregnant and has been to the emergency room several times to be treated for pain and vaginal discharge caused by her pregnancy.
The judge granted her an exception to the Texas state ban on abortion because of the danger to her health and also because if she does not get an abortion, her ability to get pregnant again may be damaged by this pregnancy. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – he of the multiple federal fraud charges and an impeachment for misusing Texas taxpayer dollars – appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and got a stay of the lower court order allowing the woman to get an abortion. The gynecologist and nurses and others who would necessarily be involved in the Cox’s abortion were afraid of being charged criminally if they administered an abortion and a prosecutor decided that their diagnosis didn’t meet the state’s standards for what is allowed under the “health and life of the mother” exception, which is poorly written, probably on purpose, to deter as many medically necessary abortions as possible.
In addition, the woman and her doctors and other care-givers would be subject to the other Texas law that allows individual citizens to sue anyone involved in helping a woman obtain an abortion, with no limit on the number of citizens who can file such lawsuits.
The word dystopian comes to mind, except this is happening right now in the state of Texas. A man, the Texas attorney general, has sued to prevent a woman who is in dire need of a medically necessary abortion from getting one. Paxton went even further, sending a letter to three Houston hospitals where the woman’s doctor, Damla Karsan, has admitting privileges, warning them that any legal order allowing them to perform an abortion would not end or limit private citizens or state officials from filing civil or criminal lawsuits under any of the overlapping abortion laws in Texas. Paxton even went as far as mentioning the woman’s husband as one of those who might be sued criminally or civilly if his wife goes through with her abortion.
Paxton’s appeal to the Texas Supreme Court made the same threat: “Nothing will prevent enforcement of Texas’ civil and criminal penalties once the T.R.O. (Temporary Restraining Order) erroneously prohibiting enforcement is vacated,” Paxton wrote.
What this means is that the state holds every card in the deck in the game of Texas hold’em women are forced to play if they encounter a situation in their pregnancy whereby a doctor says they need a medically-necessary abortion to save their lives or their ability to bear children in the future. You say you are carrying a fetus in your womb that has already died? What’s that? You got a judge’s order on the Turn? We drew an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court on the River. You think you can get your abortion by calling and showing your hand? We’ve got four aces. What have you got?
I know I have used this metaphor before, but it just keeps coming up over and over again when Republicans are running things. In Texas, it’s heads I win, tails you lose every time when it comes to getting a legal abortion. If you get a court order saying it’s necessary for the health and life of the mother, Texas can appeal and string things out, and all the while, the mother whose life is in danger can’t get the abortion she needs not wants. And even if the Texas Supreme Court were to uphold the judge’s order and rule that the abortion is necessary and thus legal, Attorney General Paxton has announced that won’t be enough. He and individual Texas citizens can still file their lawsuits under Texas’ other law allowing damages to be gotten from anyone involved in the woman’s abortion, no matter that under Texas law the abortion is ruled legal.
So, there women are in Texas, caught in the grip of fear for their freedom and their lives, even if they follow the law to the letter and get a judge to certify the legality of the abortion they need. This is not the way the law is supposed to work in Texas or anywhere else. A doctor’s word should be good enough by itself when it comes to a woman’s healthcare of any kind, but Republicans in Texas think that women and their doctors cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about the most profound issues of their health and reproductive rights, so the Republican-controlled legislature and the state’s Republican governor and its Republican attorney general have taken it upon themselves to decide what is necessary and what isn’t for Texas women.
If you live in Texas and you want to control your own reproductive health, including keeping your husband from being arrested if he helps you in your decision about what to do if you have an at-risk pregnancy, your only recourse is to move to another state that respects your rights.
If you don’t live in Texas, don’t move there. Your future will not be secure in a state that treats women like the cattle they think they’re famous for.
If this woman dies, Ken Paxton should be tried for murder and be eligible for the death penalty under Texas law.
I made this comment/story here some months ago. But your column today triggers me to share it again:
WRITTEN IN MARCH, 2023
Recently I saw a French movie made in 2021 which brought back a memory of my junior year, 1962-3, at Colgate University in upstate New York.
The movie is called “Happening”, and it is about a girl who gets pregnant in the 1960’s when abortion was illegal in France, Great Britain, and most of Europe. Ironically, it was freely available to the “enslaved” women behind the Iron Curtain.
The girl, Anne, is an excellent student and has plans to get a university degree and move up in economic/social class. Her having this baby would absolutely put an end to those aspirations. She has nobody but herself to help her, so she resorts to all sorts of primitive methods of abortion, all dangerous. I’ll stop my summary. The movie is very graphic. It can be streamed on HULU or AMC+, or rented or bought everywhere.
I found the film to be a glimpse into the French and American past which is again the American present. As ugly for girls and women as I remember it. I am 80, and I thought those days were finished, but America is regressing, and Womens’ Rights are back to what they were in my long past college days.
The movie brought to my mind how I helped a woman, my landlady, get an illegal abortion in the fall of 1962.
I found a furnished apartment above a garage which was one big room plus bath and closet. I bought a TV (I liked Steve Allen at 10), a stereo, beer (tiny kitchen area) and liquor. The rent was $50 a month, utilities included. I never cooked, as I continued paying for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Beta, or I ate in town. All my laundry was done, as usual, by the cleaners in town. I lived a lot like the way the Navy took care of its officers when at sea or in a Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) on land.
My landlady was single, in her late 30’s, looked sort of fat, and had two young boys; one in high school and the other around 12. She had some sort of office job in town. I would see the boys more than her; we would just meet every now and then as I got in or out of my car. So, I was a bit surprised when she knocked on my door, a first.
What she wanted from me was for me to pay seven months rent in advance, $350. She said she needed it immediately as “time was running out.” She had $300, but needed $650. Somebody had let her down. I told her to borrow against her house, she didn’t own the house, but had a long-term lease, so that option didn’t exist. Actually, that fact made me wary. If she and the kids just left town, I’d lose that money because the owner had no agreement with me. Finally, she told me that she was pregnant and had to have a $650 illegal abortion right away. She said that she could hardly support her boys and herself now; that she would lose her job; that she could only take care of a baby if she stopped working. Then came the tears and, of course, out came my local bank's checkbook. $350 in 1962 is about $2500 in 2023’s dollars.
She cashed my check the next morning, and went somewhere, probably a motel, for the abortion. I saw her a few days later, and she told me she felt okay, and thanked me, again.
You may find this hard to believe, but five years later I again met her oldest son. He was a sailor on the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14), on which was my squadron, Attack Squadron 52. He had seen me somewhere on this ship of 4500 men, recognized me, tracked me down, and presented himself—-in a restricted area of the ship, accompanied by a Marine guard. I was in the Intelligence room where briefings and planning went on.
The Marine asked for Mr. Hope while the sailor stood outside. I waved him in, and he told me who he was. I asked after his mother. She was fine, and still lived in that house.
I showed him around, and I gave him the same sort of briefing I would give a VIP about our bombing of North Vietnam and Laos. He loved it, smart kid that he obviously was, and understood everything. It was an eye-opener for the Marine, too.
We all shook hands, said good-bye, and I never saw him again.
Were I today to assist any woman to get an abortion, as I had helped my landlady, in “modern-day” Texas, I would be possibly subjected to prison. Texas: Go f yourself. I’d do it again if asked.