In opposing woman's legal need to have an abortion, Texas AG Ken Paxton shows his cards

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his supporters are not seeking to protect the unborn by opposing Kate Cox’s bid to obtain an abortion and Amanda Zurawski’s and others’ lawsuit to clarify Texas’ ambiguous abortion ban. Rather, they are revealing the real purpose behind their alleged efforts to “protect life.”

The pregnant women in Cox v. State of Texas – now decided – and Zurawski v. State of Texas, still pending before the state Supreme Court, had wanted their pregnancies. Tragically, either their pregnancies went disastrously awry or their fetuses had conditions incompatible with life.

Kate Cox’s fetus, for example, has trisomy 18, a chromosomal condition associated with multiple abnormalities, including cardiac defects, physical abnormalities and severe intellectual disability. Of the fetuses with trisomy 18 that survive birth, most do not live beyond their first days.

Cox opted on Monday to obtain an abortion out of state. But if Cox had been forced to carry her pregnancy to term, not only would her malformed child have quickly died but Cox would also have risked her own reproductive health in a way that she would not with an abortion.

Texas abortion law is about dehumanizing women

None of the women could obtain a legal abortion in Texas, even where sepsis or another medical emergency put their life or health in peril. The Texas Legislature made no exception for futile pregnancies in its abortion ban. In its one exception for maternal health, it failed to define what it meant by a “life-threatening physical condition … that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

Physicians who guess wrong can be convicted of a first degree felony and face a jail sentence from five to 99 years, a civil penalty of at least $100,000 and the loss of their medical license.

Future of abortion under GOP: Want to see what Republicans want for abortion rights nationally? Look at Texas.

Paxton could clarify how he intends to interpret the maternal health exception, but he has refused to do so. As a result, women in desperate circumstances cannot obtain the health care they need in Texas.

Women like the ones in these lawsuits, who have doomed fetuses or doomed pregnancies, are trying to make the least awful decision for themselves and their families in response to a terrible, unwanted situation. Preventing Texas physicians from providing them with standard medical care – an abortion – under such circumstances isn’t protecting life.

We don’t prevent physicians from providing lifesaving care to someone who had a heart attack. We don’t prevent people with diabetes or cancer from getting needed pharmaceuticals or surgery. We don’t tell them, “It’s God’s will that you are suffering this affliction.” To extend Paxton’s logic in these cases to all health care for all people would be to shut down all our hospitals and clinics and end the practice of medicine.

Abortion rights battle is never-ending. In Iowa and elsewhere, there is hope.

This isn’t about protecting innocent fetuses. It is not about getting government out of the lives of Texans. Rather, it’s about dehumanizing women by subordinating their will to their biology.

Women of reproductive age know better than anyone that they are biological beings. They menstruate. They ovulate. They know they can get pregnant, with all that pregnancy entails. In Texas, pregnancy now means that the pregnant woman exists primarily as a host for her fetus. Everything else is subordinate.

Paxton knows this. His representatives were present when the plaintiffs testified as to their suffering in the Zurawski trial. Attorneys from Paxton’s office watched as one woman became physically ill from her distress in testifying about her baby’s agonizing death following delivery.

Paxton is not pro-life. Nor is anyone who supports his office’s conduct on this issue.

Laura Hermer is a professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she teaches and writes on reproductive rights and the law. She was previously on the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch and the University of Houston Law Center. This column initially published in the Austin American-Statesman.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: With Texas abortion law, ruling, AG Ken Paxton shows GOP's cards