When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin decided he didn’t like that federal law prohibits the Armed Forces from paying for abortions, he simply released a policy to ignore the law and have the military pay for it anyway. When the Biden administration wants to keep an open southern border despite laws protecting the United States from illegal immigration, he simply eliminates the policies that deter illegal immigration and has his Justice Department cripple our ability to deport those who enter. Again, no need to change the law, just have your people enforce the policies you choose and leave no resources to enforce the laws you want ignored. This has become a powerful weapon in recent years.
This brings us to Kate Cox.
Cox would like an abortion, but she lives in Texas where abortion is illegal unless your life is in danger. Cox’s unborn baby suffers from Trisomy 18, also called “Edward’s Syndrome,” where her baby has a small chance of surviving past infancy. Although her baby has a very small chance at survival, the people of Texas have made their will clear and have voted to protect any chance of the baby’s survival.
Not everyone has been honest about this fact. Ann Coulter, for example, received an extremely sharp rebuke from Rick Santorum when she posted, “Trisomy 18 is not a condition that is compatible with life.” Santorum showed the absurdity of this statement by answering with a picture of his 13-year-old daughter who has this condition.
I have delivered babies with Trisomy 18 and have had to counsel mothers pregnant with these babies. This is a life-changing diagnosis. But medically speaking, to say children with Trisomy 18 have no chance of life is a bald-faced lie. The actual percent of these babies that would survive to adulthood is impossible to calculate — the high rate of their early abortion precludes this — other than to say survival to adulthood is very low. The best estimates we have state that less than 40 percent of these babies will survive their first month of life, and that less than 10 percent survive to their first birthday.
Cox could have quietly driven to another state to abort her child, but she isn’t just interested in termination, she’s interested in twisting the situation for political gain. She claims her life or fertility is in danger to make a point about what is legal and illegal in Texas and doesn’t care what the people or duly elected representatives of those people think.
Cox also has a doctor that is a party to the case. Her obstetrician, Damla Karsan, is willing to say under oath that “a D&E abortion is medically recommended,” but will not go as far as to say that it is necessary to protect Cox’s life or health. For this very reason, the case was overturned by the Texas Supreme Court, as it stated, “The statute requires that judgment be a ‘reasonable medical’ judgment, and Dr. (Damla) Karsan has not asserted that her ‘good faith belief’ about Ms. Cox’s condition meets that standard.”
It’s a very important point that Cox cannot find a doctor who is willing to say that her pregnancy caused “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” If she could, under Texas law (§170A.002(b)(2)), it would actually be enough if the doctor included this in his or her “reasonable medical judgment” to make the abortion a valid exception to the ban. It would not be necessary to prove anything further.
In fact, even if the Texas Medical Board then convened to remove the physician’s license for extreme incompetence, the doctor would still be protected by the law for performing the abortion because he or she believed these facts to be true at the time. I think it is a benefit to the citizens of Texas that no doctor who is this delusional is currently practicing in the Lone Star State.
Further, Cox knows her life is not in danger. Cesarean sections account for 32 percent of deliveries in the U.S. Having prior cesarean sections does not constitute a significant risk to her life. This includes the risk of uterine rupture and the risk of losing her fertility from an emergency hysterectomy. I routinely perform cesarean sections and have never had such a complication. Women have repeat cesarean sections and vaginal births after cesarean sections every day. Furthermore, with such a high rate of cesarean sections, if the Texas Legislature wanted “prior cesarean sections” to be an exception, they would have put it in the law.
At the heart of this matter, Cox (and her enablers) want to eliminate the Texas laws governing abortion. They want to throw out the will of the Texas Legislature and the will of the people. They want to go around the rule of law to make the world work the way they want.
Unfortunately for Cox, unlike Lloyd Austin and Joe Biden, she does not have the resources of a fully functioning and completely corrupt Department of Justice at her disposal. Cox resides in a state that understands that electively killing an unborn baby when a mother’s life is not in danger is not medical care. As a board-certified obstetrician, I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. This is why she lost her case.
Now that she’s lost, she has stated that she will be leaving Texas to receive the abortion in another state, an option she has had the whole time. There will be no penalties for wasting the time or money of the Texas courts. She has received an unbelievably favorable portrayal by the corporate media as a martyr, and of course, the defenseless baby with Trisomy 18 will be (or already has been) killed and cheated out of whatever small chance of survival he or she had.
Dr. Gregory J. Marchand is a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist in Mesa, Arizona.
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