On Tuesday, the Texas Supreme Court will consider this question: Are the state’s abortion laws harming women when they face pregnancy complications?
The case, brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, has grown to include 22 plaintiffs, including 20 patients and two physicians. They are suing Texas, arguing that the medical exceptions in the state’s abortion bans are too narrow to protect patients with complicated pregnancies. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is fiercely defending the state’s current abortion laws and arguing that the case should be dismissed.
At a hearing in Austin on Tuesday, the nine Texas Supreme Court justices will consider whether to apply a temporary injunction that a lower court judge ruled should be in place. That injunction would give doctors greater discretion to perform abortions when a doctor determines that a woman’s health is threatened or that a fetus has a condition that could be fatal. It would make more people eligible for exceptions to Texas’s abortion bans, but it would not overturn those laws.
Dr. Dani Mathisen, 28, is one of seven new plaintiffs who joined the case earlier this month. She is in her medical residency as an OB-GYN and comes from a family of physicians, so when she was pregnant in 2021 and getting a detailed ultrasound test at 18 weeks gestation, she knew something was very wrong.
We need an explicit right to privacy. Basically not just codifying roe in the “legalize abortion” way (though abortion needs to be legalized), but also solidify the foundation of everything built upon roe. And it needs to be a federal constitutional amendment.
We took a lot of rights for granted that were built on the implied right to privacy. The government shouldn’t get to decide what medicines you’re allowed to take so long as they are prescribed by a physician in good standing following a reasonable interpretation of sufficiently up to date research. The government shouldn’t get to decide what you do in your sex life so long as everyone involved is a consenting person who has reached the age of majority. Certain things shouldn’t get to be politics and personal medical decisions are on that list.
If you have the right to medical privacy it’s only a matter of time before the plebs want digital privacy too. The NSA can’t function in these conditions.