In keeping with Democrats’ 2024 plan to emphasize abortion, first lady Jill Biden invited Kate Cox, who left Texas in December to have her disabled baby aborted, to the annual State of the Union address in March.
President Joe Biden and Jill Biden spoke with Cox on Sunday and invited her to be one of the first lady’s guests, which she accepted, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.
“They thanked her for her courage in sharing her story and speaking out about the impact of the extreme abortion ban in Texas,” Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre said the invitation is one of the ways Biden is looking to “lift up” personal stories related to abortion in his 2024 presidential campaign.
On Sunday, @POTUS and @FLOTUS spoke to Kate Cox, who was forced to go to court to seek permission for the care she needed for a non-viable pregnancy that threatened her health. They thanked her for speaking out about the impact of the extreme abortion ban in Texas. pic.twitter.com/i7jDcIug5c
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) January 24, 2024
In Texas, abortion is outlawed except to save the life of the pregnant woman or prevent serious risk to her physical health, and a doctor can be prosecuted for performing the procedure.
Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, sued the state of Texas with The Center for Reproductive Rights to obtain an abortion after she learned that her unborn baby had Trisomy 18, otherwise known as Edwards syndrome.
Trisomy 18 is a very severe genetic condition that can cause multiple birth defects — 95 percent of babies with the condition do not survive full-term, and ten percent of babies born with the condition typically do not survive past their first year, according to the Cleveland Clinic. There are rare cases of people born with Trisomy 18 living much longer, such as the daughter of former Republican U.S. senator and pro-life advocate Rick Santorum, Isabella, who is now 15 years old. A 2020 scientific journal also describes a 26-year-old woman diagnosed with the condition who has “severe growth and intellectual limitations” but has lived much longer than expected.
The lawsuit alleged that Cox had been to three different emergency rooms within a month due to “severe cramping and unidentifiable fluid leaks.” The lawsuit also alleged that her history of having two prior cesarean surgeries meant that continuing the pregnancy “put[s] her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy.”
The complaint argued that it is Dr. Damla Karsan’s (Cox’s healthcare provider) “good faith belief and medical recommendation” that Cox’s circumstances “fall within the medical exception to Texas’s abortion bans and laws.” The lawsuit ultimately asked the court to block the state from enforcing its abortion laws to allow Karsan to abort Cox’s unborn baby.
Ultimately, the Texas Supreme Court halted a lower court ruling in December of 2023 allowing Cox, who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, to have her unborn baby aborted. The state’s high court blocked a temporary restraining order from Democrat Travis County District Judge Maya Fuerra Gamble after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the court to intervene.
President Joe Biden speaks about the importance of electing Democrats who want to restore abortion rights, during an event hosted by the Democratic National Committee at the Howard Theatre in Washington, DC, on October 18, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
As to the Texas Supreme Court’s reasoning, justices wrote in part that Dr. Karsan never actually asserted that Cox had a “life-threatening physical condition” or that “in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires.”
“No one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated. Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis,” the justices wrote.
“Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses,” they continued. “The exception requires a doctor to decide whether Ms. Cox’s difficulties pose such risks. Dr. Karsan asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.”
Cox ended up leaving Texas to have her baby aborted at around 21 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions at that stage of pregnancy typically are done with a dilation and evacuation (D & E) procedure, which can involve “crushing, dismemberment and removal of a fetal body from a woman’s uterus, mere weeks before, or even after, the fetus reaches a developmental age of potential viability outside the mother,” according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
Before inviting Cox to the State of the Union, Biden was introduced by Amanda Zurawski at his first abortion-themed campaign rally on Tuesday. Zurawski was one of five women who sued Texas last year for not being able to obtain an abortion while facing pregnancy complications.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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