‘Neighbors can come after neighbors’: Attorney warns of vigilante abortion laws in the South
In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Center’s Senior Staff Attorney Molly Duane discussed the May 22 addition of eight new plaintiffs to the Center’s lawsuit against Texas on behalf of women denied abortion care after experiencing dangerous and severe pregnancy complications. The women’s health, lives, and fertility were put at risk when they were denied care under Texas’s extreme abortion bans.
Read more about the case.
Zurawski v. State of Texas: Complete Case Information
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Duane, who is lead attorney on the case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, said that many women reached out to her to share similar stories after the lawsuit was originally filed in March. She explained that while Texas’s bans supposedly allow exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person, the language of the law is too vague and nontechnical for physicians to interpret—and with a penalty of up to 99 years in prison for violating the bans, few are willing to risk their liberty by providing an abortion.
“Of course [doctors] are terrified. Of course they are confused. And what the experiences of our plaintiffs in this lawsuit show is that this is not just a doctor here or there who doesn’t know how to interpret the law—this is a widespread, pervasive, and government-inflicted public health crisis,” Duane said in the interview. “All of these activists and politicians need to be held to account for the laws that they have put into effect.”
Watch the clip here:
- “‘Neighbors can come after neighbors’: Attorney warns of vigilante abortion laws in the South,” Meet the Press, NBC, 05.23.23
