Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dallas over a weed decriminalization ballot measure that voters approved with nearly 67% of the vote on Nov. 5. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Ken Paxton celebrated, calling the high court abortion decision ‘a major victory.’
The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to order Texas hospitals to provide emergency abortions to protect the health of pregnant women if the procedure conflicts with the state’s restrictive abortion ban.
The court, without comment, upheld a ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court Appeals, which said in January that the Biden administration overstepped when it tried to force hospitals in Texas to perform abortions in emergency situations or risk losing federal funding.
In letting stand the lower court ruling, the Supreme Court handed Attorney General Ken Paxton a legal victory in his efforts to defend one of the most extreme abortion bans in the nation.
Paxton sued the federal government in 2022, arguing that the US Department of Health and Human Services overstepped by providing guidance that said the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act required hospitals to perform abortions if a pregnant woman’s health is at risk.
On Monday, Paxton called the move by the high court “a major victory.”
“No Texas doctor should be forced to violate his or her conscience or the law just to do their job,” Paxton said in a prepared statement. “We successfully sued and stopped the Biden-Harris Administration’s backdoor attempt to overrule State abortion laws.”
Under Texas law, doctors who treat women with complicated pregnancies face the potential of criminal and civil penalties. Abortions are banned except to save the life of pregnant patients.
Since the state’s abortion ban went into effect in 2022, some medical providers have been reluctant to pursue abortions. The ban has prompted some women to travel out of state for abortions, or, for women like Amanda Zurawski, to try and navigate the narrow exceptions in the state’s abortion ban while facing dire medical consequences.
Texas’ abortion ban has been at the center of US Rep. Colin Allred’s campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz. Allred has sought to contrast his record on defending reproductive rights with that of Cruz, a long-standing supporter for strict bans on abortion. Cruz backed the Supreme Court decision in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade and described the Texas ban as “perfectly reasonable.”
Some 52% of Texas voters say the state’s abortion laws should be made less strict, according to The Texas Politics Project.
