“Torture” at the hands of Texas, the reason for which 13 women were forced to give birth

In Austin, the trial of thirteen women for “torture” by the state of Texas is celebrated. The plaintiffs denounced that their state’s anti-abortion laws forced them to conceive even after a diagnosis of fatal fetal abnormalities and grave risks to their safety.

Texas It is among thirteen US states that have rushed to ban abortions with very few exceptions, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling against abortion last year.
In the case of Amanda Zurawski, from whom the case takes its name (Zurawski v. Texas), premature rupture of the waters caused irreparable harm to the fetus by the time it reached 18 weeks. However, in the presence of residual cardiac activity, the doctors were forbidden to perform an abortion. Zurawski, who had been kept under surveillance to prevent her from having the abortion herself, developed blood poisoning that left her dying for days before the doctors intervened. Another woman, Samantha Casiano, was forced to carry the pregnancy to term even after a diagnosis of encephalitis constituted an incriminating fetus. In court, the woman vomited as she recounted how she had to witness four hours of desperate suffering for her child before he died in her arms.

deal with One of the episodes that reflects the reality of thousands of American women in the wake of the fundamentalist deviation of the Supreme Court. For citizens who have the misfortune of residing in the more than thirty states that have enacted prohibition laws (about half of American citizens), this is the dystopia worthy of Gilead: the system established in North America in Margaret Atwood’s political novel The Handmaid’s Tale—a patriarchal despotism in which women are enslaved to procreation. In fact, millions of women today no longer have autonomy over their own bodies and decisions about their health.

just one month After the case of Roe v. Wade, a Texas woman who was forced to carry an already dead fetus in her womb for two weeks. In Florida, a pregnant woman was forced to carry a fetus without kidneys to maturity. Many women are forced to travel to other states in search of an abortion, which is sometimes necessary for their survival. At least, those who can afford the expense and time do so, and many embargo countries provide for severe penalties specifically for those “exiles”. In Nebraska, for example, a mother and her 18-year-old daughter are facing a two-year prison sentence for purchasing abortion pills to terminate a girl’s pregnancy at the end of her second trimester.

Doctors and medical personnel also run the risk of severe penalties (up to 99 years in prison) for following rules that contravene the Code of Ethics. Two obstetricians and gynecologists joined the lawsuit in Texas. Dr. Damla Karsan of Houston said she also joined the lawsuit on behalf of several colleagues who feel unable to do the Hippocratic duty, but are reluctant to disclose their anger publicly for fear of reprisal.

Dramatic testimonies followed in recent days in the Austin court, such as that of Lorraine Miller of Dallas who said she was forced to travel out of state for the abortion that saved the life of one of the twins she was still pregnant with, when the other was diagnosed with Edwards syndrome (a fatal genetic condition). The women said they felt like hostages to the state and worried they might suffer from the condition again. Instead, defense attorneys requested that the case be dismissed given that the women “are not currently in danger, and it is not certain that they will be in the future.”
Opinion polls continue to show a large popular majority in favor of the right to abortion.