Dear John,
In a rare abortion rights victory out of Texas this week, a state court judge granted a pregnant woman her request for an emergency abortion. The plaintiff, Kate Cox, had received a diagnosis that her fetus has a chromosomal anomaly, trisomy 18, incompatible with life, and her physician had recommended an abortion. Carrying the pregnancy to term would put Cox’s health and future fertility at great risk, including gestational hypertension, diabetes and other complications. But thanks to Texas’s strict abortion bans, she was unable to obtain an abortion—despite the fact that continuing the pregnancy is putting her life and health at risk.
“It is not a matter of if I will have to say goodbye to my baby, but when,” Cox said in a statement. “I’m trying to do what is best for my baby and myself, but the state of Texas is making us both suffer.”
On Thursday, Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued a temporary restraining order that will allow Cox to receive an abortion. "The idea that Ms. Cox wants so desperately to be a parent and this law may have her lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” said Gamble.
The ruling applies exclusively to Cox, as well as her husband and her OB/GYN Dr. Damla Karsan, both of whom could have potentially been prosecuted under the S.B. 8 “bounty hunter” abortion ban. It comes just days after oral arguments were held before the Texas Supreme Court in a case brought by a number of Texas women who found themselves in similar situations as Cox—but who were denied abortions, and suffered medical complications as a result. As I wrote in last week’s newsletter, the case seeks to clarify the scope of Texas’s “medical emergency” exception under its state abortion bans. A ruling is expected in the coming weeks or months.
To go more in-depth on the latest abortion news, check out the articles below—or, pick up a copy of the Ms. Winter issue—available for order in our store, and on newsstands in January. In our cover story, investigative reporter Amanda Robb takes you inside a violent attack on an abortion clinic in the nation’s capital. Her article reveals, for the first time, how a clinic invasion was planned and executed—piecing together court testimony, FBI agents’ forensic analysis of the social media and cell phone records, footage obtained from the clinic’s security cameras and responding police officers’ body cameras, as well as the extremists’ own Facebook livestream. Explore Robb’s piece and so much more in the Winter issue.
At a conference this week at the United Nations headquarters in New York, people who witnessed the horrors of what happened on Oct. 7 in the brutal Hamas attacks in Israel shared harrowing firsthand accounts. Feminists have long been sounding the alarm on rape as a weapon of war—and the testimonies are spurring an urgent conversation once again, reminding us that the battle to secure justice for the victims of rape through war crimes prosecutions continues to this day. We’ve curated some Ms. reporting from the last decade, to help readers better understand the feminist fight to designate rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity. And we will continue to monitor the current conflict in Gaza and other conflicts around the world in which women are being disproportionately targeted and victimized in violation of international law.
Finally, be sure to check out our Torn Apart podcast series, which concluded this week. In the final episode, Prof. Dorothy Roberts makes the case for the abolition of the child welfare system, and lays out a vision for the more just and equitable society that could replace it. Listen now at MsMagazine.com/series/torn-apart/, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Onward,
