There is no peace for Kate Cox, the pregnant Texas woman who risks her life and that of her fetus due to the ban on abortion in force in the ultra-conservative state. According to informed sources who told The Hill, the 31-year-old mother of two has decided to leave Texas in order to have an abortion.
The woman is in her twentieth week and the fetus is affected by trisomy 18, also known as Edwards syndrome, a genetic pathology that causes various serious physical and cognitive malformations in the unborn child, often fatal before birth or in the first year of life.
All the doctors consulted advised Kate not to carry the pregnancy to term because she risks dying or not being able to have more children. But Texas is one of those Republican states that, immediately after the historic ruling of the American Supreme Court which overturned ‘Roe v Wadè, effectively nullifying the right to abortion nationwide, imposed a strict ban after the sixth week.
So the woman began a difficult legal battle which led her, last Thursday, to obtain authorization from Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to terminate the pregnancy. The next day, however, Attorney General Ken Paxton, an extremist Republican, appealed to the state Supreme Court which blocked everything. For this reason, Kate decided to flee to another state.
His dramatic story is just one of the many stories that happened after the ruling of the nine American wise men which opened the doors to a series of more or less restrictive measures in many states, from Kentucky to Florida. There are thousands of women who in this year and a half have been forced to become abortion migrants – one in five in 2023 – and just as many who have risked their lives.
Termination of pregnancy is one of the most divisive issues at the moment in the United States and one of the topics at the center of the 2024 election campaign. Joe Biden has ensured that he wants to protect women’s rights at all costs and has launched a series of measures – some of which are still blocked in the Republican-controlled House – to encourage travel for medical reasons and make the distribution of the abortion pill more widespread.
As for Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates, they all say they are pro-life, obviously each with their own nuances. They range from the more moderate position of Nikki Haley, against abortion but willing to have a dialogue on the freedom of women to make decisions for their health, to those of the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis who imposed the ban in his state after the fifteenth week.