Five women who say they were denied abortions sue Texas (updated)

USU Ventures AG

07/03/2023 16:45

(Changes sourcing to complaint, adds background)
    By Jonathan Stempel and Brendan Pierson
       March 7 (Reuters) - Five women who said they were denied
abortions despite grave risk to their lives or fetuses sued
Texas on Monday, in the first apparent case of pregnant women
suing over curbs imposed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned
Roe v. Wade in June.
    The lawsuit asks a state court in Austin, the state's
capital, for a ruling clarifying that a doctor cannot be
prosecuted for providing an abortion if, in the doctor's good
faith judgment, the abortion is necessary to treat an emergency
that threatens a pregnant patient's life or health.
    Texas, like most of the 13 states with abortion bans, allows
exceptions when a physician finds that there is a medical
emergency. But the lawsuit, backed by the abortion rights group
Center for Reproductive Rights, says that the law is unclear,
leading doctors to refuse to perform abortions even when the
exception should apply for fear of losing their licenses and
facing up to 99 years in prison.
    A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had no
immediate comment.
    Texas banned abortion shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned its landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which had
guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.
        Four of the women in Monday's lawsuit had to travel out
of state to obtain abortions in order to avoid serious medical
complications. A fifth was hospitalized in Texas with a
premature rupture of membranes, which meant that her fetus could
not be saved, but was not given an abortion until she developed
a severe infection that required her to stay in an intensive
care unit, according to the complaint.
  

 (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Brendan Pierson in New York;
Editing by Mark Porter and Alexia Garamfalvi)
 ((jon.stempel@thomsonreuters.com; +1 646 223 6317; Reuters
Messaging: jon.stempel.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))