A Texas judge on Thursday allowed a woman with a potentially life-threatening pregnancy to have an abortion in a challenge to the US state’s strict laws prohibiting the procedure.
District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble said Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, should be permitted to obtain an abortion under a medical exception provision of the Texas law that allows the procedure when a woman’s health is at risk.
The Texas suit is one of a number brought around the country on behalf of women denied abortions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the case which had granted a constitutional right to the procedure for five decades.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox, said the Texas case was believed to be the first in which a pregnant woman was asking a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.
The 31-year-old Cox, a mother of two from Dallas-Fort Worth, learned last week that her fetus has full trisomy 18, a fatal genetic condition.
“All of her doctors have told her that the baby will be stillborn or will live for only minutes, hours or days,” attorney Molly Duane said during the emergency court…
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