(Houston) The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal demanding clarification of “medical exceptions” to the ban on abortion in this conservative southern American state, demanded by a women’s organization and doctors.
Since the Federal Supreme Court in June 2022 gave states the freedom to legislate on abortion, reversing jurisprudence of nearly half a century, around twenty of them have banned abortion or have very strongly restricted.
Texas prohibits any voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), including in cases of incest or rape. The only exceptions: in the event of danger of death or risk of serious disability for the mother. Doctors face up to 99 years in prison, a $100,000 fine and the revocation of their medical license if they perform an abortion outside this framework.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday overturned an August ruling by a trial judge recognizing that the plaintiffs had been “delayed or denied access to abortion due to widespread uncertainty about doctors’ discretion.” “.
It had ordered that practitioners cannot be prosecuted after having exercised their “judgment in good faith” and that they be authorized to determine what constitutes a medical emergency likely to endanger “life and/or health ( including fertility) of a woman.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court affirms that this decision deviates from the law as it was adopted and therefore exceeds the prerogatives of the judicial power.
Texas law allows a doctor to respond to the risk to the life of the pregnant woman without having to wait until “death or serious physical disability is imminent,” assures the Supreme Court.
Among the twenty complainants, however, several testified that they had to wait until they were seriously ill for their doctor to feel legally authorized to intervene.
The Center for Reproductive Rights which initiated the complaint deplores in a press release that the Supreme Court’s decision “totally fails to provide the clarity that Texas doctors need to provide abortion to patients suffering from serious complications in their pregnancy without the risk of being sent to prison.