A Texas judge on Thursday granted a request to allow an abortion despite the state’s strict bans, in the case of a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition.
The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County district court, sided with the woman, Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, issuing a temporary restraining order to permit her doctor to perform an abortion without facing civil or criminal penalties under the state law. The judge, a Democrat, agreed with Ms. Cox’s lawyers that the procedure was necessary to protect Ms. Cox from a potentially dangerous birth, and to preserve her future fertility.
The ruling applied only to Ms. Cox, whose case was believed to be among the first attempts to seek a court-approved abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year and allowed states to enact their own abortion restrictions.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be pregnant, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking, and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” the judge said at the conclusion of a roughly 30-minute video hearing. “So I will be signing the order, and it will be processed and sent out today.”
Ms. Cox’s fetus was found to have trisomy 18, a genetic condition that in all but very rare cases leads to miscarriage or stillbirth, or to the infant’s death within the first year. Her lawyers said she had visited the emergency room four times because of pain and discharge — including once after her suit was filed on Tuesday — but that doctors had told her that under Texas law, she had to continue her pregnancy.
Ms. Cox, 31, could be seen wiping away tears from her eyes as she watched the judge issue the decision in the video proceeding with her husband, Justin. She said in an interview on Tuesday that she and her husband, who live in the Dallas area and have two young children, hoped for a big family and never planned on having an abortion.
The Texas attorney general’s office, which argued on Thursday against granting the order, could seek the intervention of a higher court. The office has said that Ms. Cox did not qualify for a medical exemption to the state’s abortion bans. It did not immediately comment on the judge’s ruling.
Texas is at the forefront of states that restrict abortion, and has overlapping bans that outlaw abortions from the moment of fertilization and allow private citizens to sue others who help a woman obtain an abortion.
The laws provide for some exceptions to save the health and life of the pregnant woman, though abortion rights advocates argue that the provisions are unclear and put women with pregnancy complications at risk.