2023-07-19 19:35:28
Women who were denied an abortion in Texas despite serious complications during their pregnancy delivered painful testimonies on Wednesday during a hearing in an Austin court, following their complaint once morest the American state.
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These women, represented by the organization Center for Reproductive Rights, seized the Texas justice system to ask it to clarify the “medical exceptions” to the laws now prohibiting abortion in this conservative state.
According to their complaint filed in March, these exceptions are too vaguely defined, which scares doctors and dissuades them from performing an abortion, even in this context. Texas laws provide for heavy fines and up to 99 years in prison for doctors performing illegal abortions.
In the case of the thirteen plaintiffs, the pregnancy was desired but encountered complications that inevitably condemned their fetuses.
The first to tell her story, Amanda Zurawski, her water broke at 18 weeks pregnant. Her doctor then told her that a miscarriage was inevitable, but that it was not possible to induce labor because it “would be considered an illegal abortion,” the young woman told the court.
She was only able to get this procedure three days later, following suffering from sepsis, a generalized infection that led her to spend several days in intensive care and led to the loss of one of her tubes.
“What happened to me is happening to people all over the country, not just in Texas,” Amanda Zurawski said. “So many people are affected by similar bans, and I hope to make this known more widely.”
Another plaintiff, Samantha Casiano, was unable to obtain an abortion despite her baby being diagnosed with anencephaly – malformation of the skull and brain – meaning that he would not survive. For long weeks, she had to repeat her story to those congratulating her on her pregnancy. Her daughter died just four hours following giving birth.
Contexte «hostile»
Since the US Supreme Court gave states back the freedom to legislate on abortion themselves, in a historic judgment rendered in June 2022, around 15 of them have adopted ultra-restrictive laws or made abortion illegal. on their ground.
Texas has banned all voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortion), at any stage of pregnancy, including incest or rape. Only exception: in case of danger of death or risk of serious disability for the mother.
Despite this exception, the “hostile” context has a deterrent effect on doctors, underlines the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Although the Texas abortion ban has a medical exception, that exception simply doesn’t work in practice,” said Molly Duane, one of the organization’s attorneys.
The law includes the notion of “danger to the life” of the mother, but “the degree of certainty of this danger, or how close in time it must be, is not clear”, she said. said.
The Center for Reproductive Rights first calls for the implementation of an emergency measure: that the law prohibiting abortion does not apply in the event of medical complications during pregnancy, while the file is studied. on the merits by the courts.
This measure “is necessary to stop the current public health crisis caused by the confusion and uncertainty around the medical exception”, he argues.
The state of Texas, he says that the definition of the medical exception proposed by the plaintiffs would amount to “allowing abortions for pregnant women with medical concerns ranging from a headache to a feeling of depression”. He asks that the complaint be dismissed.
The hearing, which is scheduled to continue Thursday.
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