Five women have taken legal action in Texas to demand that this conservative American state clarify the "medical exceptions" to the laws which prohibit local doctors, under penalty of heavy fines and prison, from performing pregnancy terminations.
According to the organization Center for Reproductive Rights which represents them, this is the first complaint filed by American women who have been refused abortions since the Supreme Court of the United States dynamited, in June, the right to abortion. 'abortion.
In this unprecedented complaint and during a rare public speech, these five Texans told, Tuesday, March 7, how they had been refused an abortion despite serious complications. Beyond the legal aspect, it is also for them to show the Americans "the concrete implications" of the restrictive laws adopted by fifteen States after this historic judgment.
Texas laws, which provide for up to 99 years in prison for doctors performing abortions, allow exceptions but only "in cases of life-threatening or severe disability to the mother."
A law considered vague and confusing
“No one should have to wait until they are near death to receive health care,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. The plaintiffs consider the law to be vaguely worded and confusing for medical professionals who fear repercussions if they perform an abortion.
At a press conference in Austin, in front of their state parliament, they explained that they had experienced a first trauma when they discovered, after a few weeks of desired pregnancy, that their fetus was not viable.
When the bag of waters broke, months before the end, "my heart broke into millions of pieces", said, very moved, Anna Zargarian, 33 years old. "I wanted to curl up and cry," added Lauren Miller, who, pregnant with twins, learned in the second trimester that one of the fetuses had life-threatening defects. "But I couldn't because I had to arrange to have an abortion outside of my state, to give the other baby a chance to survive," the 35-year-old explained.
Both took a flight to Colorado, where it is possible to abort late in a pregnancy. It was "the most frightening experience of my life," said Anna Zargarian. It was like playing Russian roulette: I could bleed, get infected, or go into labor at any time. “They were able to receive the desired care and Lauren Miller, who appeared in front of the media with a very plump belly, is due to give birth at the end of the month.
'Chilling testimonies', says Kamala Harris
At eighteen weeks pregnant, Lauren Hall had discovered that her fetus had no skull and could not survive. She traveled to Seattle to have an abortion at a clinic where she was greeted by "protesters who called me a killer while holding up posters of dead babies." Pregnant again, she said she was "scared of everything", "watching every little pain for fear of being in this unbearable situation again".
For her part, Amanda Zurawski, 35, successfully terminated her pregnancy in Texas, but had to wait three days after her water broke because her hospital refused to intervene until she showed signs of infection.
"My doctor couldn't intervene as long as his heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the hospital ethics board to consider my life threatening and allow the normal health care I needed. at that time,” she explained. Because of this delay, she developed sepsis, spent several days in intensive care and lost one of her tubes. For her, "there are no words to describe the trauma and despair of having to wait to die, or having to wait for the death of your child, or both."
The complaint "contains chilling, direct testimony from women who nearly lost their lives after being denied care," Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. "In 2023, in the United States, these stories are shameful and unacceptable," added White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, denouncing "the extremist efforts of Republicans to take away women's freedom of choice".
