The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed legal actions in Tennessee, Idaho, and Oklahoma, representing women who claim they were denied abortion care during medical emergencies. This move marks an escalation of the center’s strategy, which was previously employed in a Texas lawsuit that argued the unclear exceptions for protecting the life or health of the mother were jeopardizing pregnant women’s well-being.
Marc Hearron, the senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights leading these legal actions, emphasized that the goal is twofold: to demonstrate that pregnant individuals are being denied timely medical care wherever abortion is banned and to provide clarity to doctors who are apprehensive about providing the procedure.
Anti-abortion groups have countered these claims, accusing their opponents of exaggerating risks to pregnant individuals and dismissing these legal actions at the state level as “scare tactics” due to setbacks in the federal battle. They argue that broadly written exceptions could potentially allow any abortion clinic to find a health exception to justify the procedure.
In Texas, a temporary victory for abortion rights advocates was secured in early August when a judge ruled that, in cases of dangerous or complicated pregnancies, doctors must be allowed to use their “good faith judgment” to provide abortion care. However, the state immediately appealed the ruling, which is currently on hold, with oral arguments scheduled for late November.
Similar to the Texas approach, the new filings in Tennessee, Idaho, and Oklahoma do not seek to overturn abortion bans entirely. Instead, they rely on personal testimony to shed light on the physical and mental trauma plaintiffs say they experienced because doctors hesitated to perform abortions due to concerns about liability.
The lawsuits in Tennessee and Idaho include physician plaintiffs and highlight the dilemmas doctors face when they risk penalties, including fines, loss of medical licenses, and imprisonment if they perform procedures deemed to violate abortion bans.
One of the lead plaintiffs in the Tennessee lawsuit, Nicole Blackmon, experienced a traumatic pregnancy with multiple complications. After her doctors informed her they could not perform an abortion, she faced deteriorating health and eventually delivered a stillborn baby.
The new cases underscore the potential impact of personal testimony on public opinion and legal proceedings, a tactic demonstrated in the Texas case, which garnered widespread attention due in part to plaintiffs’ graphic, first-person accounts in court.
These developments are part of the ongoing abortion battles that have shifted primarily to the states following last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion.
The strategy focuses on revealing the harm faced by individuals with complicated pregnancies and raises legal questions about states’ obligations to protect their citizens’ rights. Abortion access remains a central issue in various recent ballot initiatives across the country.
The Center for Reproductive Rights has successfully challenged some of Oklahoma’s abortion bans last year on the grounds that the exceptions were too narrow. With limited prospects for advancing their cause in federal courts, abortion rights groups are now focusing on state-level battles to protect and expand access to abortion care.
