While Texas Women Die, Ken Paxton Celebrates The Overturning Of Roe v. Wade As A Holiday
AUSTIN, TX — Today, as Texas marks four years since the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for Texas’ extreme abortion ban, Ken Paxton is celebrating what he says should be an “annual holiday.” Meanwhile, Texas women continue to die, are forced to flee the state, and are refused medical care due to hospitals’ fear of criminal punishment from Paxton under Texas’ abortion ban.
Texas Democratic Party spokesperson Ryan Martin:
“Women in Texas have been denied basic healthcare, forced to flee the state, or bleed out in hospital parking lots, because Ken Paxton threatened to sue them and their doctors. And today on the anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Paxton celebrates their suffering. Texans support the right to choose and Texas women will hold Paxton accountable for his attacks on their freedom in November.”
Ken Paxton has been the most vocal defender and enforcer of Texas’ draconian abortion ban, with no exception for rape or incest and sweeping criminal consequences for women and their doctors.
See his grotesque record for yourself:
Paxton filed an amicus brief calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.
Paxton has attacked women in Texas, including Kate Cox, going after them “in a very personal way” to stop them from getting the medical care they need and forcing them to flee the state.
Paxton has threatened doctors who seek to provide an emergency abortion with imprisonment. This week it was reported a woman was refused medical care for an infection due to hospitals’ fear of criminal punishment from Texas’ abortion ban.
Paxton even bragged about Texas women being forced to leave the state for lifesaving health care under Texas’ extreme abortion ban as “stimulating” interstate commerce.
Texas’ abortion ban, which Paxton enforced, discouraged Texas women from seeking IVF treatment to start their families because the extreme restrictions created a “murky area” that put “many families with infertility issues in limbo.”
Under Paxton’s enforcement of Texas’ abortion ban, women have had their ability to have children in the future endangered and lost by being denied basic care for their health.
Paxton has gone after doctors and healthcare providers who prescribed Mifepristone in other states threatening them with jail time.
Paxton himself voted for an addition to Texas’s penal code affording legal rights to fetuses in criminal cases that is still in effect today, a law that “identif[ies] an ‘unborn child at every state of gestation from fertilization until birth’” and could be interpreted to ban IVF.
Paxton voted for Texas’ controversial HB2, which banned abortions after 20 weeks and was the subject of Wendy Davis’ historic filibuster.
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