2023-06-18 19:19:32
BBC News World newsroom
4 hours
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Caption,
Amanda Zurawski has sued the state of Texas.
The Texas state law banning all abortions except in extreme medical circumstances is one of the strictest introduced in the US since the right to the procedure was annulled in June of the previous year.
The most critical voices say that it is forcing many women and their doctors to choose between breaking the law or making the right decision for their health.
And this is where the story of Amanda Zurawski and her husband Josh begins. They had both recently purchased her dream home.
Located in one of the most sought after areas of Austin, Texas, it had panoramic views of a lake and golf course.
It was the perfect place to welcome her first child, who was on the way.
But the day of the move – last August – was not at all what they had imagined.
Amanda had just been released from the hospital because her health had been complicated and her life was in danger after the doctors denied her an abortion.
“I felt like I was living in a dystopian world,” Amanda told the BBC.
“No pregnant person in the United States should fear for their life because of the laws.”
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Josh and Amanda were preparing for the life they had dreamed of when they received some bad news.
In the twelve months since the Supreme Court struck down the Roe v. Wade ruling giving states the right to ban abortion, 13 states have passed near-total bans.
Texas is the largest state to pass these laws, perhaps one of the strictest.
Those laws prohibit all abortions from the moment of conception, except in cases of a “life-threatening physical condition” or “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
Breaking the law can carry a $100,000 fine and a life jail sentence.
When Amanda found out she was having a daughter, she and her husband were overjoyed.
But the same day she compiled the guest list for her baby shower, she was diagnosed with a problem that not only led to her losing her baby, but also put her in the crosshairs of Texas’ abortion ban.
The doctors told her that she had cervical insufficiency, which is a weakening of the cervical tissue that causes premature dilation, and confirmed that her daughter would not survive at birth.
Amanda and her husband were devastated.
“He was a much-wanted baby,” he said.
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Caption,
The abortion debate has polarized the US for decades.
The standard medical procedure for a nonviable pregnancy at that stage of development is to terminate it and remove the fetus.
Waiting to miscarry naturally can put the mother at risk of infection, which can be fatal.
But the doctors told her that they could not terminate her pregnancy, as under state law it was a crime to perform an abortion while the fetus’s heart was beating, unless the mother’s life was in danger.
Essentially, the message was that she was not yet sick enough to legally warrant an abortion.
Three days later, Amanda developed a life-threatening infection and went into septic shock.
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Amanda Zurawski suffered septic shock as a result of not being able to abort
“My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, I couldn’t put a sentence together,” she said.
“Imagine when you have the worst flu you’ve ever had in your entire life and multiply that by a thousand. It was horrible.”
At the hospital, they induced labor and eventually miscarried the baby, whom she named Willow.
She was then immediately sent to the intensive care unit, where she spent the next several days.
The sepsis had scarred her uterus and fallopian tubes, causing one of the tubes to become permanently blocked.
Amanda is now one of 13 women and two doctors who have decided to sue the state of Texas in hopes of changing the ban, to give doctors more leeway to determine when an abortion is necessary.
The state has asked the judge to dismiss the case.
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Caption,
Plaintiffs Anna Zargarian, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall and Amanda Zurawski at the Texas State Capitol after filing a lawsuit on behalf of Texans harmed by the state’s March 2023 abortion ban.
On Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation clarifying that doctors can use their “reasonable medical judgment” to prevent serious complications caused by ectopic pregnancies or premature rupture of membranes, which was the cause of Amanda’s sepsis.
new legislation
Abortion advocates and politicians who support the ban say Texas laws have always been clearly written, but the new legislation will help make it more explicit.
“If a doctor can foresee that a woman will develop potentially life-threatening sepsis, they can act immediately,” said Rebecca Parma, who directs abortion research and advocacy for Texas Right to Life.
She also noted that now that abortion has been banned, her group intends to advocate for increased social services for women and the extension of Medicaid, or free health insurance, up to a year after childbirth, to ensure that abortion is not neglected. women’s health.
But the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is funding the lawsuit on behalf of the women and doctors, said there was not a list long enough to cover all cases in which an abortion might be medically necessary.
His position mirrors that of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which says that each patient brings unique medical considerations to the table.
Organization member Dr. Leah Tatum, who treats patients at the Austin Regional Clinic, says Texas laws are so vaguely worded that they cause stress and anxiety for medical providers across the state, who fear being accused of a crime.
“I’m coming at this from an objective medical point of view,” he said. “A pregnancy has more risk for the patient than an early termination.”
“At what point in the law are you considering the patient’s life at risk?”
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If the baby’s heart is beating, abortion is prohibited in Texas.
Medicine is not a black and white issue, he said, and cases that fall into gray terrain are more difficult to interpret within the law.
Although she is part of a large clinic and has lawyers available to advise her, she is concerned about providers who do not have the same support system, particularly in rural areas.
“This is very different from how we were trained and what the national standard for maternity care is,” said Dr. Judy Levison, a physician who resides in Houston.
But she decided to stop seeing patients, partly because of these bans, and is now one of two doctors suing the state.
Unethical
Levison primarily cared for low-income patients and felt that he had to start practicing medicine in an unethical way.
“Where were they going to get an abortion? How could they afford to travel, get someone to take care of their children, be two days off work and maybe risk their job? Suddenly I felt like my hands were tied behind my back,” she said.
And while the law, and recent legislation clarifying the law, makes exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger, Texas does not allow abortions in the case of lethal fetal abnormalities, which are medical problems that make the fetus unlikely. to survive at birth.
Taylor Edwards, who is also a party to the lawsuit, said that because there were no exceptions to this, she was forced to leave Texas to have an abortion that terminated her non-viable fetus.
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Caption,
Anna Zargarian is another of the plaintiffs.
emotional torture
“The emotional torture of those two weeks cannot be described. I don’t know how to explain to people how absolutely terrible it is to know that you are pregnant with a baby that is not going to live,” she said.
She is not the only one who has made the decision to leave the state to have an abortion.
Many have had to travel hundreds of miles to Kansas or New Mexico, sometimes calling a dozen or more centers to schedule their procedure, explains Kari White, M.D., of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Austin. .
“From an emotional point of view, these people have had traumatic experiences, not because they were going to have an abortion, but because they were not sure if they could do it or not,” she told the BBC.
Like Amanda, Taylor also underwent fertility treatments, spent tens of thousands of dollars to conceive, only to discover in her second trimester that her daughter Phoebe would not survive.
At her 17-week scan last February, the doctor saw that the fetus had a condition known as an encephalocele. Taylor recalled the moment the doctor told her the baby would not survive: “I started screaming, I don’t know what came over me.”
She didn’t want to have to carry her daughter to term, only to give birth to a stillborn baby.
But the cost and stress of having to leave the state also took a toll on him psychologically.
Three hours before her flight to New Mexico, the clinic said they had run out of medication needed for the procedure.
She eventually got a later appointment in the state of Colorado, just days before the 19-week limit was reached, after which the procedure could no longer be performed.
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Caption,
Only women who can afford that expense can fly to other states.
The total cost of the flights, hotel and abortion reached $6,000 and was not covered by insurance, he said.
“You shouldn’t have to deal with that when you’re going through the worst experience of your life,” he said.
“And on top of that seeing you in a situation where you’re made to feel like a criminal.”
As for Amanda, after losing Willow and moving back to her home in Austin, she and her husband discovered that a tree growing in the yard of their new home was a desert willow.
Every morning they greet him, feeling that their daughter is nearby.
Like the Edwardses, they began another round of fertility treatment in hopes of having another child.
As the one-year anniversary of the repeal of Roe vs. Wade approaches, both women say they are hopeful, but they are still going to fight.
“When I look back on the last year and everything that’s happened to me personally, but also on our political landscape, I see a lot of people mobilizing,” Zurawski said.
“I’ve said before that I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than an angry mom and there are a lot of angry moms out there right now.”
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