Welcome to the "Pro-Life" Dystopia

The Texas Supreme Court, including one judge who was arrested for protesting abortion clinics, just denied a potentially life-saving abortion for a woman whose fetus had a fatal diagnosis.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Kate Cox was 20 weeks pregnant with her third child when her fetus received a devastating diagnosis: Trisomy 18, a genetic defect incompatible with life. If Cox didn’t miscarry late in pregnancy, she would give birth to a child who was stillborn or who would die soon after coming into the world. Continuing the pregnancy put Cox’s own health at risk — she ended up in the emergency room several times — and, doctors said, because of her previous C-sections could rupture her uterus and compromise her future fertility.

The state of Texas said: Too bad.

A doomed pregnancy is itself devastating. Being forced to continue one is torture: Fielding congratulations and belly-touches from strangers; going through the pain and peril of pregnancy; risking your life in childbirth knowing your child will die — and then watching it happen. This is exactly why so many pregnant women who receive devastating diagnoses choose to terminate these wanted-but-cannot-be pregnancies.

But Kate Cox lives in Texas, and so she didn’t have a choice: Texas, like most states that criminalize abortion, allows no exception for severe fetal anomaly. So, with the backing of her doctor and the Center for Reproductive Rights, Cox petitioned the courts to allow her to end her doomed pregnancy, protect her own health and fertility, potentially save her own life, and certainly preserve her own sanity.

The Texas Supreme Court said no.

After a lower court agreed that Cox could have a necessary abortion, the state of Texas appealed, arguing that under Texas law, Cox must be legally forced to continue her pregnancy — the health issues it poses, the state argued, simply aren’t severe enough to warrant an abortion, and the fact that the fetus is going to die is immaterial to whether or not the state can force a woman to carry and birth it. One of the justices who sits on the Texas Supreme Court and concurred with their ruling, John Devine, is a radical Christian fundamentalist who was embroiled in a lawsuit when he refused to remove a painting of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. He’s also a rabid abortion opponent who has bragged that he was arrested 37 times for protesting abortion clinics, and has been convicted of committing crimes at those protests. And he ran for his Supreme Court seat on a campaign of glorifying women who are willing to die in order to continue doomed pregnancies: