Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington after the court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. vists made abortion pills and emergency rooms into battlegrounds, and woman after woman after woman came forward with stories of medical care delayed or denied because of confusion over Texas’ abortion laws.Texas, with 30 million residents and 10% of the women of reproductive age in the nation, used to see about 4,400 abortions a month.
Of course, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. They don’t capture the frantic trips out of state, the pills secreted in a bathroom, the forays over the border, all the ways Texans are managing to terminate their pregnancies despite the laws. This “life of the mother” exception, as it is often called, is supposed to allow doctors to perform an abortion when medically necessary. In practice, many doctors say the vagueness of the language and the extreme penalties leave them paralyzed.
The numbers, however, don’t shed light on the process a woman goes through to get that abortion. Amanda Zurawski’s membrane ruptured when she was 18 weeks pregnant, guaranteeing she would miscarry. Her doctors repeatedly refused to perform an abortion because they could still detect a fetal heartbeat. It wasn’t until she went into sepsis, eventually spending three days in the intensive care unit, that they acted.
“Our law allowed that doctor to intervene sooner, and so that's not an issue with the law,” O’Donnell said. “Her story is heartbreaking, but it is not an outcome that's based on Texas law, but just a doctor who didn't perform the life-saving abortion.” But state data shows that 88 of the 90 abortions performed in the 18 months for which data is available happened because there was a medical emergency, as well as being necessary to preserve the health of the patient. And while no doctor has been prosecuted, there is a three-year statute of limitations and both state and private attorneys have shown their willingness to bring long-shot cases to test the limits of the law.
Even while it upheld the state law on abortions as it applied to complicated pregnancies, the Texas Supreme Court conceded that more clarity is needed. Late last year, justices asked the Texas Medical Board, the state licensing agency, to issue clearer guidance to doctors to help them interpret the laws and feel more confident performing medically necessary abortions.