From our correspondent
NEW YORK – Abortion has been one of the hottest political issues in the United States over the past two years, and Kate Cox's story is having a huge impact on public opinion, proving it will remain a central issue in the 2024 election 31-year-old Cox is not an activist, she is a mother of two children (three and one and a half years old) and wants more. Against her will, she has become a symbol because she lives and became pregnant in Texas, which has one of the most restrictive abortion bans. The fetus has a syndrome that has a 95% chance of killing it in the womb, and if it were born it would have very serious deformities; The birth jeopardizes Cox's ability to have more children. Nevertheless, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the statutory exceptions protecting the mother's life did not apply to her case. While the woman left Texas to get an abortion elsewhere, the ruling is causing controversy and will cause some to see (and perhaps vote) things differently.
It is one of the most controversial cases since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the ruling that established federal protection of the right to abortion in 1973 and was overturned by the Supreme Court in the summer of 2022. This Dallas woman's story has raised questions about what exceptions there are to abortion laws in various American states. These seemingly clear exceptions are actually very unclear, which is why several cases end up in court. Cox happily discovered she was pregnant in August; In October, she learned she was expecting a girl but likely had trisomy 18, also known as Edwards syndrome, a chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of an extra pair of chromosome 18 that has serious consequences for prenatal development In a high percentage of cases, death occurred in utero. All the doctors told her that it was risky for her to continue this pregnancy, as if she had an induction or a cesarean section (for the third time), she would run the risk of not having any more children in the future. With the support of her husband, the woman appealed to the court and requested an exception to the abortion ban, which comes into force in Texas after the first six weeks, when the fetus's cardiac activity begins. Since there are exceptions for risk to the woman's life or for “serious harm to a bodily function,” Cox hoped the state would understand that “there is no one who wants this child more than me, but there isn't.” Opportunity to give birth to her while protecting her health and mine,” she wrote in an open letter in the Dallas Morning News.
The law imposes a prison sentence of up to 99 years as well as fines and loss of license for doctors who perform abortions. In the case of Cox v. A Texas judge in the progressive city of Austin had initially allowed the exception, but after the appeal – in which Attorney General Ken Paxton said that in any case, the doctors and hospitals in Texas that performed the procedure would have been criminally charged – the case went to the Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling on December 12th.
A very painful personal decision that ultimately led Cox to leave Texas to have an abortion in a state where abortion is legal has become a political issue. It's an issue that could be crucial to Joe Biden's victory in 2024, as well as to many gubernatorial and congressional candidates. It is no coincidence that Kate Cox's story is now being repeated at every campaign rally by Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden's campaign is blaming Trump for appointing three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade.
Kate Cox's story is not unique. In September 2022, a Louisiana woman had to travel to New York for an abortion after discovering that her fetus, missing part of its skull, would die before or a few minutes after birth. There are exceptions to the ban in Louisiana, but this particular disease was not on the list, again raising questions about the vagueness of the rules, from Tennessee to Oklahoma to Idaho. What probability of death should the mother have? Is 20% enough or is 80% necessary? Additionally, medical conditions can change quickly. A year ago we talked about the case of Amanda Zurawski, also in Texas: 18 weeks into her pregnancy, her water broke, but the court ruled that this did not sufficiently endanger her life and therefore she was unable to become pregnant cancel. The fetus died in the womb and due to complications it is unlikely that Zurewski will have any more children.
From a legal perspective, these stories are about the need to clarify what constitutes an exception to the abortion ban. But from the perspective of public opinion, they have an enormous impact because they overturn the conservative stereotype that abortion is almost exclusively a choice for adolescents or irresponsible people. Polls show that many Americans are neither completely pro-life (anti-abortion) nor completely pro-choice (pro-abortion), but somewhere in between. In states that have very restrictive bans, people often don't know the exact rules, but when they do, they argue for exceptions for the life of the mother, the health of the child, incest and rape. Additionally, when informed of the rules, they often support protecting the right to abortion through inclusion in the state constitution.
Republicans currently have no unified strategy on this issue. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House, avoided discussing Cox's case but emphasized that his state's ban on abortion includes exceptions for fatal fetal abnormalities after the first six weeks save his mother's life. Nikki Haley, De Santis and Trump's rival for the nomination, spoke of the need to “remember the human aspect of these situations.” “We don’t want women to be forced to give birth under these conditions, and we don’t want them to have an abortion at 37, 38, 39 weeks” (a position that certainly doesn’t please the social conservatives in his party). Kellyanne Conway, the former Trump strategist and conservative pollster, advised Republicans running for Congress in 2024 to talk more about access to contraceptives and less about banning abortion.