(C) Ohio Capital Journal
This story was originally published by Ohio Capital Journal and is unaltered.
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MAGA Republicans look to impose nationwide abortion ban if they win big in 2024 [1]
['More From Author', 'December', 'Marilou Johanek']
Date: 2023-12-19
God bless Kate Cox. The Texas woman who allowed the world in on her private hell is heroic. She is a 31-year-old mom of two young kids whose plans for a third went horribly wrong. When Cox was around 20 weeks pregnant she got the worst, pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road news. Her baby wasn’t going to make it.
The developing fetus had a fatal genetic birth disorder. Cox faced an almost certain miscarriage or stillbirth. Half of those born with the acute affliction do not survive the first week. An estimated 90% to 95% die within the first year.
Adding to the devastating diagnosis, Cox was told her life, health, and chances of ever having another baby could be in great peril if she carried her pregnancy to term. Imagine, if you can, the staggering sadness Cox and her husband must have felt in the doctor’s office at hearing the unbearable reality.
The sledgehammer grief of letting go of a doomed, but fiercely desired pregnancy, to save the mother from dire health and fertility risks is absolutely crushing. Millions of women have experienced the depth of despair and profound loss that Cox was fated to endure. But besides her painful heartbreak, the Dallas mother was also destined to suffer abject cruelty by her own state when she summoned the courage to go public with her tragedy.
After being in and out of emergency rooms for severe cramping, fluid leaks, elevated vital signs, and a rapidly deteriorating condition, Cox consulted with her doctor and made a wrenching decision. She would seek a medically necessary exception for an abortion under Texas anti-abortion laws, which ban the procedure at nearly all stages of pregnancy.
With extraordinary bravery she bore the indignity of being the first adult woman who had to ask for government permission to end her pregnancy after Roe. Cox threw herself at the mercy of a court and prayed it would allow her access to the urgent medical care she needed from her OB-GYN. In the before Dobbs times, it would have been unthinkable to require grown women to get judicial approval for their personal reproductive medical decisions.
In the before times, Cox had the freedom to control her own body and destiny under 50 years of precedent. The constitutional right to safe, legal abortion was the established law of the land. But now, living in the GOP’s Gilead as a Texas Handmaiden, Cox had to beg a judge to let her terminate a nonviable pregnancy she grieved deeply. Her eagerly awaited baby girl suffered a lethal chromosomal curse.
Cox was informed that her fetus, with grave malformations of the spine, heart, brain and limbs “could not sustain life.” Cox was also at heightened risk of uterine rupture if she continued the nonviable pregnancy, which could complicate future pregnancies. Through awful torment and tears she made the choice to legally end her pregnancy at home.
If anyone qualified for the narrow exceptions outlined in the strictest abortion bans in the country, she thought, it was her. The district court she appealed to agreed. It granted Cox allowance for an emergency abortion in Texas finding, “Ms. Cox’s life, health, and fertility are currently at serious risk” and “the longer Ms. Cox stays pregnant, the greater the risks to her life.”
Moreover, concluded the judge, “The idea that Ms. Cox desperately wants to be a parent, and this [anti-abortion] law might cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice.” The emotionally depleted and physically drained plaintiff wept. But her relief was short-lived.
Hours after the order was handed down, Texas’s nearly impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton jumped in to undermine it and subjugate Cox to the whims of the state’s MAGA patriarchy. This wasn’t about the agony of a terrified woman and her stricken fetus. This was about the precedent Cox’s case would set for legally obtaining an abortion in Texas.
Paxton had to stop it and with the help of an all-Republican state supreme court, which ruled unanimously against Cox, he did. An extremist brigade of white men with absolute power (and no medical degrees) decided what health care was appropriate for Kate Cox to receive in Texas. Her enraging dehumanization was complete.
The Texas high court rhetorically deferred to the judgement of medical providers on what critical physical conditions met the criterion for exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. That gave the justices cover to pretend abortion exceptions for medical emergencies were possible under the Texas ban. But they belied the sham when they dismissed medical certainty for partisan rigidity — Cox’s condition was not life-threatening enough to get an abortion waiver.
Fortunately, the young mother was able to leave the state for the procedure. At least she could. Many other women in Gilead GOP dystopias will have their futures decided for them by the state. Ohio voters recoiled at the inevitability and overwhelmingly enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution.
But what happened in Texas could go nationwide if MAGA zealots, who endorse a federal abortion ban with illusory exceptions, win big in 2024. Cox made herself a test case to demonstrates the stakes for all women. She went to hell and back to unmask the unthinkable.
God bless her.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/12/19/maga-republicans-look-to-impose-nationwide-abortion-ban-if-they-win-big-in-2024/
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