In its original lawsuit against the state of Texas, the Center for Reproductive Rights along with Amanda Zurawski and 19 other women asked the court to “enter a judgment against [the state] granting appropriate declaratory relief to clarify the scope of the exception to Texas’s abortion bans.” The plaintiffs, mostly women who claim they were denied medically-necessary abortions, sought “a Texas court to affirm doctors’ ability to perform abortions under certain exceptions.”
What the lawsuit asks
The suit filed by Zurawski states, “The AMA [American Medical Association] recently updated its Principles of Medical Ethics to clarify that in the context of abortion, ‘physicians must have latitude to act in accord with their best professional judgment’ and be ‘expressly permitt[ed] . . . to perform abortions in keeping with good medical practice.’ The AMA also states that “[l]ike all health care decisions, a decision to terminate a pregnancy should be made privately within the relationship of trust between patient and physician in keeping with the patient’s unique values and needs and the physician’s best professional judgment.'”
But based on Texas law and the claims made in the lawsuit, it appears the true goal is to get the court to legislate from the bench in favor of expanded abortion access.
What the laws state
The Texas Heartbeat Act does provide an exception for medical emergencies that allows doctors to use their medical expertise to determine how to handle a specific woman’s case. It states that abortion is allowed following the detection of an embryonic heartbeat “if a physician believes a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance” with the law when the doctor determines “that a medical emergency necessitated the abortion…”
The law allows doctors to use their own medical judgment to determine the care a pregnant woman needs if she is facing complications.
In other words, the law is already exactly how abortion advocates are claiming it should be.
In addition, in September, a new Texas law took effect. HB 3058 (Relating to the provision of certain medical treatment to a pregnant woman by physician or health care provider) states that concerning pregnancy complications, “It is an affirmative defense to liability in a civil action brought against a physician or health care provider for a violation [of the pro-life law when] the physician or health care provider exercised reasonable medical judgment in providing medical treatment to a pregnant woman in response to: (1)A An ectopic pregnancy at any location; or (2)AA a previable rupture of membranes.”
HB 3058 also states, “[T]he board may not take disciplinary action against a physician who exercised reasonable medical judgment in providing medical treatment to a pregnant woman.” It goes on to say, “A physician or health care provider is justified in exercising reasonable medical judgment in providing medical treatment to a pregnant woman…”
Based on the wording in both of these pro-life laws, to ask the state to “clarify the scope of the exception” and to claim that the law doesn’t want physicians to act with “their best professional judgment” as the AMA advises, are manipulative reasons to file a lawsuit since the laws are already clear that doctors are allowed to exercise their best medical judgment.
HB 3058 also makes it clear that treatments for ectopic pregnancy and the preterm rupture of membranes are not abortions.
Medical neglect
What happened to Zurawski and her fellow plaintiffs could be considered medical neglect. Zurawski told People that she experienced “what felt like water running down my leg,” but “fully expected [doctors] to send me home and all would be fine.” However, after a “shockingly brief examination,” doctors explained that she was dilating prematurely due to an incompetent cervix, the amniotic sac was “bulging,” and that miscarriage was inevitable. They told her there was nothing they could do, and Zurawski was sent home, likely heartbroken and scared.
But there was something doctors could have, and should have, done.
Dr. Christina Francis, board member and CEO-elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists explained to Live Action News:
As an OB/GYN, I have taken care of many women with cervical insufficiency. It can be a heartbreaking situation and my heart goes out to this couple. While many details about this particular patient’s clinical situation are missing, elective abortion is not a treatment for cervical insufficiency.
Many times, if infection is ruled out, women can be treated with a stitch, called a cerclage, which is placed in her cervix to hold the unborn baby in until he or she can survive outside the mother. An attentive physician should be able to detect signs of infection early and, if present, provide the appropriate treatment – which would be induction of labor. This treatment is not prevented by any abortion restriction in the country.
Spreading false information not only serves to unnecessarily scare women and their families, it has a detrimental effect on their health as well.
Based on Zurawski’s own retelling of her story, doctors appear to have failed to offer her the standard and proper treatments as described above, and if so, could be guilty of medical neglect.
After her initial diagnosis, doctors sent Zurawski home without any treatment, and three days later, she was in the ICU with sepsis. Neither People nor Zurawski mentioned the use of prophylactic antibiotics or testing to see if Zurawski had an infection before the doctors sent her home. There was also no mention as to whether doctors monitored her for infection as they should have. Then, when they finally did act, they carried out a preterm delivery of Zurawski’s daughter — not an abortion.
An induced abortion — which is the procedure that is currently restricted in Texas and elsewhere due to the fall of Roe v. Wade — is an act that intentionally causes the death of the preborn child. Zurawski’s baby’s death was never her or the doctors’ intention.
The majority of the pregnancy emergencies currently being shared by major media outlets in support of abortion were not situations in which abortion would have been deemed medically necessary. They are situations of medical neglect. That’s because induced abortion (again, the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child) is not medically necessary. None of the women suing the state of Texas began their pregnancies wanting an abortion, and none of them should have been led to believe they needed an abortion. Early delivery that does not intend the death of the child is not an abortion.
Some of the women needed proper, quality medical care to save their lives while also trying to save their babies’ lives. Others didn’t need anything other than the proper, quality care for their babies and pregnancy.
Lauren Hall learned at 18 weeks that her baby had anencephaly, and would likely die at or shortly after birth. Her baby didn’t need to be killed prematurely in the womb. Likewise, Lauren Miller learned that one of her twins had Trisomy 18, and she wanted to abort just that one twin. Abortion was not medically necessary; it just allowed her to ensure that her baby with a disability would not survive. Of the 20 women who signed on as plaintiffs, none needed to have their preborn baby killed on purpose by abortion as a treatment for medical concerns. The same is true of the women behind a similar lawsuit against the state of Idaho.
It is never medically necessary to kill one patient to save another.
The real goal of the lawsuit
The true goal of the lawsuit, it appears, is not to gain “clarification” on the law, but to ensure the law is cracked wide open enough to allow the medical excuses for abortion that existed under Roe v. Wade to be resurrected.
Under Roe and its sister case, Doe v. Bolton, medical exceptions for abortion included a range that extended beyond health care. Medical exceptions included a woman’s physical health, but also her mental health, familial health, and even her financial health. That “health” loophole allowed abortion through all 40 weeks of pregnancy for virtually any reason at all.
The law is already clear; the lawsuit is an effort to get the court to legislate from the bench in favor of broad “health” exceptions for abortion that will lead the U.S. straight back to the days of Roe and Doe, in which children could be legally killed in the womb for essentially any reason, so long as a doctor claimed it was related to a woman’s “health.”
