A Texas woman who sought a court order to get an abortion as doctors feared her pregnancy threatened her health, has left the state to get the procedure elsewhere.
Kate Cox, 31, turned to the legal system after being told if she continued with her current pregnancy, her baby would likely be stillborn as it has a condition called Trisomy 18 and has no chance of survival.
Doctors also told Ms Cox, a mother-of-two who said she wanted to have a third child, that to continue the pregnancy would risk her chances of having another baby.
Ms Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, was believed to be the first woman in the US to ask a court for permission for an abortion since Roe v Wade was overturned last year by the Supreme Court, and a judge initially granted her permission.
But Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to the state’s supreme court, which put the lower court’s ruling on pause.
On Monday, it was revealed Ms Cox had left Texas, which has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, to obtain the procedure elsewhere.
“After a week of legal whiplash and threats of prosecution from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Kate Cox has been forced to leave Texas to get healthcare outside of the state,” said the Centre for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based non-profit that has been supporting her.
“Kate has been unable to get an abortion in Texas, even though her foetus has a fatal condition and continuing the pregnancy threatens her future fertility.”
The group said it was not revealing where Ms Cox had travelled to. “Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer,” said the centre’s CEO Nancy Northup.
Observers believe the case of Ms Cox is likely to be the first of many across the country, where abortion is banned in 14 states and severely restricted in many others.
Just days after Ms Cox filed her lawsuit, a pregnant woman in Kentucky also asked a court to allow an abortion. That ruling is now pending.
Texas has one of the harshest bans. Since August 2022, a law has made it illegal for all abortions, except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk.
That exception, apparently does not refer to foetal deformity, and Mr Paxton had argued Ms Cox did not not demonstrate the pregnancy put her life in danger.
“The Texas legislature did not intend for courts to become revolving doors of permission slips to obtain abortions,” he wrote last week.
The issue of abortion access is likely to be a major factor in next year’s presidential election.
The 2022 midterms suggested voters would turn out to vote for Democrats who vowed to defend abortion access, and referendums even in putatively conservative states such as Kansas and Ohio, have been won by abortion access rights activists.
Polls suggest around 60 per cent of Americans believe access to abortion ought to be legal in most cases.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a six-week abortion ban, and has said he would support a 15-week nationwide ban if elected president. Donald Trump has said Florida’s law is too extreme and that the issues ought to be left to the states.
In an interview last week with PBS, Ms Cox explained why she had been willing to make her fight public. She also revealed the struggle of mourning the imminent loss of her pregnancy while leading her legal battle.
“We’re taking it day by day. We’re hanging in there,” she said.
“It’s a hard time. It’s a lot of grief. We’re grieving the loss of a child, so just taking it day by day.”