{"id":296040,"date":"2023-08-05T18:50:39","date_gmt":"2023-08-05T23:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=296040"},"modified":"2023-08-05T18:50:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T23:50:49","slug":"texas-ag-immediate-appeal-pro-life-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/texas-ag-immediate-appeal-pro-life-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas AG files immediate appeal after judge blocks pro-life law in certain cases"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Texas judge ruled<\/a> on Friday in favor of a group of women who sued the state over the medical exception of its pro-life law in the case known as Zurawski, et al. v. State of Texas, et al<\/em>. However, the Texas attorney general’s office filed<\/a> an immediate appeal with the state Supreme Court, effectively blocking the judge’s ruling and leaving the pro-life law in place.<\/p>\n

Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum had temporarily blocked state officials and health agencies from enforcing the state’s pro-life law in specific cases, according to Texas Right to Life. The women at the center of the lawsuit argued that the law’s medical exception put their lives in danger due to a lack of clarity. As a result of the ruling, doctors would have been able to commit abortions in emergency medical situations based on their “good faith judgment” — which is what the law allows anyway. But doctors who commit abortions on preborn children due to a serious health diagnosis would also not have faced penalties under Mangrum’s ruling either, according to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mangrum wrote that “uncertainty regarding the scope of the medical exception and the related threat of enforcement of Texas’s abortion bans” means that doctors “will have no choice but to bar or delay the provision of abortion care to pregnant persons in Texas for whom an abortion would prevent or alleviate a risk of death or risk to their health… for fear of liability under Texas’s abortion bans.”<\/p>\n

What the law says<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, the Texas abortion code<\/a> states<\/a>, “If an abortion is performed or induced on a pregnant woman because of a medical emergency, the physician who performs or induceds the abortion shall execute a written document that certifies the abortion is necessary due to a medical emergency and specifies the woman’s medical condition requiring the abortion.”<\/p>\n

Medical emergency is defined by the law as “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.”<\/p>\n