{"id":313186,"date":"2024-05-31T16:34:57","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T21:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=313186"},"modified":"2024-06-03T00:51:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T05:51:24","slug":"texas-supreme-court-upholds-human-life-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/texas-supreme-court-upholds-human-life-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Supreme Court upholds Human Life Protection Act after legal challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Texas Supreme Court has upheld the Human Life Protection Act, which protects virtually all preborn children from abortion in the state of Texas. There are certain health\/life exceptions in the law, and plaintiffs argued that those exceptions are overly vague, putting women’s lives at risk, and therefore, need to be clarified. The court, however, disagreed.<\/p>\n

A press release<\/a> from the Texas Attorney General’s office states that the court’s opinion explained:<\/p>\n

Texas law permits a life-saving abortion. Under the Human Life Protection Act, a physician may perform an abortion if, exercising reasonable medical judgment, the physician determines that a woman has a life-threatening physical condition that places her at risk of death or serious physical impairment unless an abortion is performed. <\/em><\/p>\n

The law permits a physician to intervene to address a woman\u2019s life-threatening physical condition before death or serious physical impairment are imminent. Because the trial court\u2019s injunction departed from the law as written without constitutional justification, we vacate its order.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the opinion<\/a>, written by Justice Bland, the court noted that life-saving abortions are permitted under the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cA physician who tells a patient, \u2018Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,\u2019 and in the same breath states \u2018but the law won\u2019t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances\u2019 is simply wrong in that legal assessment,\u201d the court wrote.<\/p>\n

The court also stated that the claim in the suit, filed by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, was that the law made doctors afraid to perform life-saving procedures, believing they would be forced to defend themselves in court if they intervened. The court rejected this claim, and pointed out that the law leaves doctors able to seek guidance from existing medical opinion and “peer-reviewed best practices,” as opposed to the sheerly subjective standard the Center for Reproductive Rights seems to prefer (emphases added):<\/p>\n

Rather, in an enforcement action under the Human Life Protection Act, the burden is the State\u2019s to prove that no reasonable physician would have concluded that the mother had a life-threatening physical condition that placed her at risk of death or of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion was performed.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Center favors a law that would examine a particular doctor\u2019s intent in proceeding with an abortion. Contrary to its assessment, a subjective standard is less insulating of a physician\u2019s decision-making than the objective one that the Legislature has adopted.<\/strong> As the State\u2019s expert observed, physicians can turn to peer-reviewed best practices associated with a patient\u2019s particular diagnosis and treatment.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A subjective standard, in contrast, examines a doctor\u2019s intent instead of medical facts. This intent would be subject to scrutiny based on a physician\u2019s views about abortion and its availability. Regardless of those views, the law permits an abortion when reasonable medical judgment would find one indicated to avert death or substantial bodily impairment of a pregnant woman diagnosed with a life-threatening physical condition arising from or aggravated by her pregnancy.<\/strong> With confirmation of those facts through the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the law permits an abortion without inquiring into a physician\u2019s state of mind. <\/em><\/p>\n

At the same time, the law demands that medical facts support the need for an abortion permitted under the Act.<\/strong> A doctor may not disregard the requirement that the mother must have a life-threatening physical condition or that the condition must place the mother at risk of death or serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Much of the case, primarily surrounding the most notable plaintiffs, Kate Cox<\/a> and Amanda Zurawski<\/a>, has been rife with misinformation, often emotionally manipulative misinformation at that. People are understandably horrified at the idea that women might be left to die when they could otherwise be saved, all because of one law… but that is not the case in any of these circumstances. Among the various plaintiffs suing Texas, some were carrying babies with disabilities, and others needed medical intervention or early delivery, but none of them<\/em> needed an induced abortion: the intentional, targeted killing of a preborn child<\/em>.<\/p>\n