Joe Pojman, founder and executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, one of the state’s leading anti-abortion rights groups, also defended the medical exception. “The law is already clear,” he said. “Judges are supposed to interpret the law, not rewrite the law.”
The suit names the state of Texas, the Texas Medical Board and Board Executive Director Stephen Brint Carlton as defendants. Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, is also a defendant, though he is currently suspended pending a state Senate trial on impeachment charges alleging bribery and other wrongdoing.
Lawyers for the attorney general’s office, who could not be reached for comment, are asking the court to dismiss the suit. In a rebuttal petition, they accuse the plaintiffs of staging “splashy news conferences and media tours” to get a favorable court ruling “after failing to convince the Legislature to adopt their preferred version of the medical exception.”
A proposed court order by the plaintiffs asks the court to give physicians discretion to use “good faith judgment” in providing abortion care to someone withunsafe pregnancy complications or instances in which a fetus is unlikely to survive the pregnancy or live after birth.