Texas AG Ken Paxton threatens to prosecute woman’s doctors for emergency abortion approved by court

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened on Tuesday to prosecute any doctors who provided a woman with an emergency abortion hours after she won a court order allowing her to obtain the procedure due to medical necessity, Reuters reports. Paxton, a Republican, wrote in a letter that the order from Austin District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble did not protect the doctors from prosecution under all of Texas’ abortion laws, and that the woman, Kate Cox, had not proved she qualified for the medical exception to the state’s abortion ban.

In a statement that came alongside the letter, Paxton added that Guerra Gamble’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.” The letter was sent to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she’d provide Cox with abortion care, has privileges to admit patients. “Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans,” Marc Hearron, senior counsel at Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Cox, said in a statement. “He is trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer.”

Cox filed a lawsuit on Tuesday requesting a temporary restraining order to prevent Texas from enforcing its near-total abortion ban in her situation, arguing that continuing her pregnancy threatened her health and future fertility. Cox’s fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that usually results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death soon after birth. The judge said she was granting the order at a Thursday morning hearing. “The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Guerra Gamble said during the hearing.