Texas Supreme Court rules to enforce pro-life law

The highest court in the Lone Star State issued a ruling on Friday to reject challenges to the state’s laws protecting unborn babies from abortion. The ruling upholds the protections which were already fully in place. Last August, a lower court granted an injunction against their enforcement, allowing doctors to administer abortions based on a good-faith judgment, but that injunction was blocked after the state's supreme court granted an appeal from the Texas attorney general's office.  Texas law protects babies from being aborted unless the mother’s life or vital bodily function is at risk. Despite the exception, doctors allege they are unable to give medically necessary abortions out of concern for legal repercussions.

What was the case about? More than 20 women alleged the state’s strict pro-life laws kept doctors from performing medically necessary abortions. Court documents show testimony that doctors refused to abort babies diagnosed with neural tube defects like anencephaly. Women alleged that continuing what they believed to be non-viable pregnancies put their health at risk.

For example, one woman testified to suffering from a premature dilation of the cervix, which doctors said would result in a miscarriage. When doctors chose not to end the pregnancy for fear of legal repercussions, preterm, pre-labor rupture of membranes ensued, which sparked a septic infection before her stillborn baby was delivered. The woman ultimately required surgical reconstruction of her uterus and lost the use of a fallopian tube due to the infection, according to court documents. The plaintiffs wanted courts to set a clearer definition of what is considered a medically necessary abortion.

What does the ruling mean? The protections for the unborn still stand. A lower court ruling had temporarily paused the law’s full enforcement as it was written and allowed doctors to give abortions on a “good faith judgment,” before that ruling was blocked by the state supreme court. The nine-judge panel's latest ruling established that the “good faith” judgment was unnecessary because of the broad scope of the law’s medical exceptions. A doctor who says the law prohibits an abortion, even if the patient will die if she does not receive one, is misinterpreting the law, the majority opinion read.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the U.S. Supreme Court case hearing arguments on Idaho’s law regulating medical emergency abortions.