The limitations of Texas’ oppressive abortion laws—evident to everyone with more than two brain cells to rub together—became infuriatingly obvious over the past few weeks as Kate Cox was granted and then refused a medically necessary abortion. When asked to comment, GOP senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn refused to so much as acknowledge the consequences of their own legislation.
To recap: In late November, Texas resident Kate Cox learned that the 21-week-old fetus she was carrying had trisomy 18, a fatal genetic disorder. After multiple visits to an emergency room due to pregnancy complications, Cox sought a court order to obtain an abortion, which is often recommended in this circumstance to protect the health of the mother and avoid unnecessary suffering of the fetus upon delivery. (90-95% of infants born with trisomy 18 do not survive past the first year; the majority die within days.) Cox, a mother of two, also wanted to preserve her chances of being able to conceive again, which would be negatively impacted by being forced to carry the fetus to term.
After a State District Judge granted Cox’s request to obtain the medically necessary abortion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a predictably soulless statement threatening to prosecute any medical professionals who aided Cox. By the time the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, Cox had already left the state to get an abortion.
Which brings us to this week. Republican Texas Senators and anti-abortion ghouls John Cornyn and Ted Cruz were asked multiple times to comment on Cox’s case. Cruz took the coward’s way out and refused to comment, not at all surprising from the man who fled the state for Cancún during the 2021 winter storm that claimed over 240 lives.
Cornyn, who was asked by NBC News five separate times to comment, offered this obnoxious reply: “I’m not a state official, so I’m not going to comment on what state officials are doing. I’m happy to comment on anything that I’m responsible for.”
When I was a teen growing up in this very state, I learned—in health class, from a begrudging P.E. coach, and at home, from my stepmom, a nurse—that people who engage in sexual activity have certain responsibilities to themselves and their partners. It was my understanding, even then, that people who are not prepared to deal with pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections should not be having sex.
It seems to me that people like John Cornyn and Ted Cruz should not be sticking their proverbial dicks into life-altering legislative matters if they aren’t prepared to deal with the very real consequences of their actions.
Texas has a “medical emergency exception” that should allow a pregnant person to obtain an abortion when medically necessary. But Texas has also made it impossible for doctors to provide this specific form of healthcare at their own discretion with its “bounty hunter law,” which allows citizens to file a civil suit against anyone who “aids or abets” abortion care. The consequences for medical professionals are serious enough to warrant the need for a court order to perform abortion services. Bans on abortion and gender-affirming healthcare have driven healthcare professionals out of Texas; following the abortion ban, the number of medical students applying to residences in the state has continued to decrease—bad news for a state where the maternal mortality rate is only getting worse.
Cornyn and Cruz (and every other anti-abortion politician in Texas) shouldn’t get to ignore these outcomes while accepting praise from their fellow swamp monsters for saving precious lives. It’s not as if they actually believe that every fetus is a person with inherent rights: Earlier this year, former Abilene prison officer Salia Issa filed a federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and her superiors, arguing that they caused the death of her fetus. Issa was seven months pregnant and experiencing pains when she asked to be relieved of duty so she could go to the hospital. Her superiors refused and accused Issa of lying. When Issa finally made it to the hospital almost three hours later, she was taken to the emergency room, where she delivered a stillborn fetus.
In its response to the filing, the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton—the same Ken Paxton who threatened any doctor who might help Kate Cox—argued that Issa’s fetus didn’t have any rights. “Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the 14th amendment does the same,” the office wrote, noting (almost spitefully) that the stillbirth occurred before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. In other words, fetal personhood wasn’t enshrined in law until abortion rights were gutted.
And in other, more literal words: These people do not give a shit about fetuses. They certainly do not care about the children who do exist, as evidenced by their pro-gun, anti-“woke,” anti-education, anti-literacy, anti-health, racist, homophobic, transphobic, et al. legislation. What they do care about is controlling the lives and livelihoods of everyone else, especially when those people are not white, male, and wealthy. And they’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, including pretending to give a shit about “unborn children” and refusing to accept responsibility for the death and destruction they’ve made possible through oppressive legislation.
(featured image: Kevin Dietsch / Anna Moneymaker, Getty Images)
