The Texas Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday to uphold the state’s near-total abortion ban, denying claims that the law risks the lives of Texans with severe pregnancy complications.
“Texas law permits a life-saving abortion,” the majority opinion written by Justice Jane Bland reads. “The law permits a physician to intervene to address a woman’s life-threatening condition before death or serious physical impairment are imminent.”
The ruling comes following the lawsuit against Texas’s anti-abortion statute filed by Amanda Zurawski, who was 18 weeks pregnant when she suffered from a preterm prelabor rupture of membranes.
Doctors in Texas refused to terminate Zurawski’s pregnancy during this life-threatening condition, and she spent three days in the intensive care unit after developing sepsis. Zurawski was one of President Joe Biden’s guests at the 2024 State of the Union address.
Twenty-one other Texas women and several doctors joined the lawsuit, saying that the lack of clarity on when an abortion procedure would be medically necessary required physicians to wait until the complication was severe to the point of death for the mother.
Bland wrote, however, that the anti-abortion statute “does not require that a woman’s death be imminent or that she first suffer physical impairment.”