Several Texas women suing the state over what they say are deeply confusing restrictions shared their harrowing stories in court on Wednesday
At a courthouse in Texas, the same state where the seed of nationwide abortion access was planted more than 50 years ago, a group of women once again stood up to share their gripping and emotional experiences of being denied abortion care.
Like others around the country, pregnant Texans have faced an intimidating legal landscape since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its decision in Roe v. Wade last summer. On Wednesday, several of the women currently suing the state of Texas over its severe abortion restrictions appeared at the Travis County Civil and Family Courthouse to oppose the state’s motion to dismiss their case.
“I had to watch my baby suffer,” plaintiff Samantha Casiano said Wednesday, sobbing. She was not able to abort the pregnancy in Texas because the fetus still had a heartbeat, and instead carried the sick child to term earlier this year.
“The moment my daughter came out of me, she was gasping for air — that’s all she could do,” Casiano said. “I just kept telling my baby, ‘I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.’ There was no mercy there for her.” The girl, named Halo, died after around four hours, never meeting her four siblings.
Plaintiff Ashley Brandt, who was pregnant with twins last year, was able to abort one fetus that was not growing a skull, eventually giving birth to one healthy daughter. But she had to flee to Colorado to do so. The procedure took 10 minutes.
Had she not been able to terminate the unhealthy fetus, Brandt said, her otherwise healthy daughter may have died. She would have had to experience something similar to the trauma Casiano endured.
“I would have had to give birth to an identical version of my daughter without a skull and without a brain, and then I would have had to hold her until she died,” Brandt said through tears. “And then I would have had to sign a death certificate and plan a funeral, and decide whether to bury or cremate her.”
“I don’t feel safe to have children in Texas anymore,” Brandt said. “It was very clear that my health didn’t really matter, and my daughter’s health didn’t matter.”
“We should not be torturing babies and calling it pro-life,” Lauren Miller, a plaintiff who did not testify, said at a press conference Wednesday.
Another plaintiff, Amanda Zurawski, testified in detail about her harrowing near-fatal experience with a pregnancy she was also not permitted to terminate in Texas, despite having lost most of her amniotic fluid at 17 weeks. She was told the fetus would not survive.
Zurawski went into septic shock. Both her parents and her husband’s parents flew to Austin from Indiana out of fear that she would not survive. After three days in intensive care, however, she began to heal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/women-sha...f6db43?nrk
At a courthouse in Texas, the same state where the seed of nationwide abortion access was planted more than 50 years ago, a group of women once again stood up to share their gripping and emotional experiences of being denied abortion care.
Like others around the country, pregnant Texans have faced an intimidating legal landscape since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its decision in Roe v. Wade last summer. On Wednesday, several of the women currently suing the state of Texas over its severe abortion restrictions appeared at the Travis County Civil and Family Courthouse to oppose the state’s motion to dismiss their case.
“I had to watch my baby suffer,” plaintiff Samantha Casiano said Wednesday, sobbing. She was not able to abort the pregnancy in Texas because the fetus still had a heartbeat, and instead carried the sick child to term earlier this year.
“The moment my daughter came out of me, she was gasping for air — that’s all she could do,” Casiano said. “I just kept telling my baby, ‘I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.’ There was no mercy there for her.” The girl, named Halo, died after around four hours, never meeting her four siblings.
Plaintiff Ashley Brandt, who was pregnant with twins last year, was able to abort one fetus that was not growing a skull, eventually giving birth to one healthy daughter. But she had to flee to Colorado to do so. The procedure took 10 minutes.
Had she not been able to terminate the unhealthy fetus, Brandt said, her otherwise healthy daughter may have died. She would have had to experience something similar to the trauma Casiano endured.
“I would have had to give birth to an identical version of my daughter without a skull and without a brain, and then I would have had to hold her until she died,” Brandt said through tears. “And then I would have had to sign a death certificate and plan a funeral, and decide whether to bury or cremate her.”
“I don’t feel safe to have children in Texas anymore,” Brandt said. “It was very clear that my health didn’t really matter, and my daughter’s health didn’t matter.”
“We should not be torturing babies and calling it pro-life,” Lauren Miller, a plaintiff who did not testify, said at a press conference Wednesday.
Another plaintiff, Amanda Zurawski, testified in detail about her harrowing near-fatal experience with a pregnancy she was also not permitted to terminate in Texas, despite having lost most of her amniotic fluid at 17 weeks. She was told the fetus would not survive.
Zurawski went into septic shock. Both her parents and her husband’s parents flew to Austin from Indiana out of fear that she would not survive. After three days in intensive care, however, she began to heal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/women-sha...f6db43?nrk
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
