A pregnant Texas woman who says her unborn baby has a genetic condition and carrying the child to term could threaten her life filed suit against the state Tuesday, asking a court to declare she has the right to terminate the pregnancy.
Kate Cox said the state’s current abortion ban puts her husband and her gynecologist at legal risk if she has an abortion in Texas.
The lawsuit is believed to be one of the first attempts in the country by an individual seeking a court-ordered abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, according to the New York Times.
Roe happened because Norma McCorvey chose to go to court instead of simply traveling out of state to obtain an abortion.
Most courts in the US require that a plaintiff in a lawsuit be at risk of significant actual harm due to the law or precedent they’re suing to overturn. In the case of abortion rights lawsuits, this requires an actual pregnant woman to stand up in court in hopes of getting the law changed for herself and all women like her.
This is called “legal standing” and applies pretty much everywhere except the Supreme Court, which has suddenly and ahistorically decided that proper legal standing isn’t necessary, and anyone can be a plaintiff on a lawsuit that presents only hypothetical harms.
I wish that last paragraph was even remotely sarcastic.
Interesting and ultimately unfortunate that women need to be martyred so other women can have basic human rights because we can’t pass any law at a federal level protecting this