After the judge’s ruling in favor of 31-year-old Cox, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton went to the Supreme Court. That court paused the lower court’s decision last Friday and decided on Monday that she is definitively not entitled to an abortion because “her own life is not in danger.” All nine judges of the Texas court are Republicans and against the right to an abortion.
Cox was 20 weeks pregnant with her third child, who has a fatal condition. Doctors said carrying the pregnancy to term could be life-threatening for Cox. But the judges do not agree on that.
The case was seen as an important test for other abortion lawsuits in the United States. Since June 2022, the right to abortion has no longer been regulated nationally. Texas abortion laws have since become among the strictest in the country.
“This ruling should infuriate every Texan,” Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights, an attorney for Cox, said in a statement. “If Kate can’t get an abortion in Texas, who can? Kate’s case is proof that exceptions don’t work, and that it is dangerous to be pregnant in any state that bans abortion.”