Five Texans who were turned down by doctors abortion despite the serious complications they faced, they filed a lawsuit against the anti-abortion laws in force in this conservative state.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents them, this is the women’s first appeal since the U.S. Supreme Court blew up abortion rights last June, overturning a 50-year-old decision.

The lawsuit “contains horrifying first-hand accounts of women who almost died because they were denied medical care,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said in support of the five women.

The plaintiffs are expected to give a press conference today. They all tell them that they wanted to have children they were carrying, but during medical tests they found that the embryos were not viable. The attending physicians refused to abort them, despite the risk of bleeding and infection. They link the doctors’ refusal to abortion laws in Texas. One of them provides for up to 99 years in prison for doctors who violate the ban.

Although exceptions are also provided for when there is a “risk of maternal death or disability”, they are very vague.

One of the women, Amanda Zurafsky, 35, said her water broke when she was still 17 weeks pregnant, too early for the fetus to survive. The hospital waited for the first symptoms of the infection to appear, three days later, until doctors performed therapeutic curettage. She says she developed sepsis, spent several days in intensive care, and lost her fallopian tube because doctors refused to treat her.

Another woman, Lorraine Miller, was pregnant with twins and was told that one of the fetuses was not viable. Despite the risks to her own health and the development of another fetus, the medical staff did not remove the non-viable fetus. Miller was forced to travel to Colorado at her own expense to undergo surgery. She is expected to give birth at the end of the month.

Lauryn Hall discovered at 18 weeks pregnant that the fetus had no skull and would not survive. She was forced to travel to Seattle to terminate her pregnancy.

Unlike other appeals filed by doctors or organizations, these women do not challenge the abortion ban directly, but ask the court to clarify the scope of the exceptions.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}