The Texas Supreme Court said a medical exemption in the state’s abortion ban applies only when a person is at risk of death or serious physical impairment, ruling Friday against women who sued the state with claims that the ban had put their health at risk.
The state’s highest court, which is made up entirely of Republicans, reversed a lower court’s order that broadened the exception to circumstances in which a pregnancy is “unsafe” for the pregnant person or when there is a fetal condition making it unlikely the fetus will survive.
“Because the trial court’s order opens the door to permit abortion to address any pregnancy risk, it is not a faithful interpretation of the law,” the state Supreme Court said.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by several Texas women who suffered serious health complications in their desired pregnancies. They alleged the state’s strict abortion laws put their lives and health in danger when they were forced to wait until their health seriously deteriorated before receiving the procedure or were denied an abortion altogether until they traveled out of state.
The Texas Supreme Court said the challengers did not prove the abortion ban, with its narrow medical emergency exemption, violated the state constitution.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was defending the abortion ban, did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the case on behalf of the women last year, said the ruling did not provide “meaningful clarity” for doctors. Nancy Northup, the group’s president and CEO, added that it is “enormously disappointed that most of the women who sued Texas for what happened to them have been rejected by the Court.”
“It is unclear at this point if the case will continue but our legal team will be assessing what, if anything, remains of our clients’ claims,” Northrup said.
The Texas justices took issue with the trial court’s order allowing for abortions to be performed if a doctor had a “good faith” reason to believe the procedure was necessary. The high court ruled doctors must hew to the “reasonable medical judgment” standard in the law, which the ruling described as requiring doctors to “identify a life-threatening physical condition that places the mother at risk of death or serious physical impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.”
The state Supreme Court said a fetal condition making a pregnancy unviable was not by itself a reason that an abortion could be performed.
“As painful as such circumstances are, that the law does not authorize abortions for diagnosed fetal conditions absent a life-threatening complication to the mother does not render it unconstitutional,” read the opinion, written by Justice Jane Bland.
How state abortion bans apply in medical emergencies has been flashpoint in the fallout from the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that ended the federal right to an abortion. The high court is now considering a Biden administration lawsuit challenging Idaho’s abortion ban, which exempts abortions when a woman’s life is threatened but not when she is facing risks of bodily impairment that fall short of being potentially fatal.
In Texas, the state Supreme Court previously weighed in on the medical emergency exemption with a 2023 ruling that blocked a doctor from performing an abortion for a Texas woman whose pregnancy complications were putting her health and future fertility at risk. (The woman traveled out of state to receive the procedure.) The ruling called on the Texas Medical Board to issue more guidance to clear up confusion around when the exemption applies. The state board has proposed such guidance; however, critics say its draft rules have not clarified the question.
