The name on the case

Amanda Zurawski: the name on the case

Amanda Zurawski did not choose this fight. It found her in a hospital room, where she lay in pain, watching the law tie her doctors’ hands.

At 18 weeks pregnant, Amanda’s water broke early, a condition known as PPROM, which doctors knew would lead to the loss of her pregnancy. But under Texas law, they couldn’t intervene until her life was in serious danger. So they waited. Amanda developed sepsis, a severe and potentially deadly infection. She was rushed to the ICU. Her life was saved, but her future fertility was not. One of her fallopian tubes is now permanently closed.

What happened to Amanda wasn’t a mistake or a medical anomaly. It was a direct result of state legislative policy that kicked in automatically once the federal right to abortion was overturned by The U.S. Supreme Court in the summer of 2022.  After that ruling, Texas law forbade her doctors from doing what their training and ethics told them was right—to provide her with a an abortion when it was clear her pregnancy was doomed and her own health and life was at risk.

“My initial reaction was shock,” Amanda says,“It felt dystopian. I kept telling my husband Josh and my parents that there must have been some mistake. When it sank in—that this is reality—it was just fury and rage.”

Rather than stay quiet, Amanda chose to speak out. She became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Texas’s abortion bans, seeking one thing: clarity. What does the law mean by “medical emergency”? And why did she have to come so close to dying before she could get the essential care she needed to preserve her own life? “It started out isolating and lonely,” Amanda says. “But as more women joined the Zurawski case, and eventually other Center cases, a community came into focus. Seeing what we could accomplish with this lawsuit and beyond has been really eye-opening. I have always been a team-sports person, but as an adult I haven’t been on a team like this. It’s been so empowering to see what we can accomplish together.”

Stories of pain and perseverance

Stories of pain and perseverance

Amanda’s telling of her own story encouraged others to do the same and what followed were more public examples of women who had lived through similar nightmare medical experiences  in Texas and other abortion ban states—each one unique, but bound by the same kind of government-imposed cruelty.

Texas plaintiff Lauren Miller was pregnant with twins when doctors discovered that one of them had a fatal condition. Continuing the pregnancy put both her life and her healthy twin at risk. Her medical team recommended a selective abortion, but Texas law wouldn’t allow for it, even though it meant she and her healthy twin were at risk of dying. So Lauren was forced to leave her state for life-preserving medical care.  Traveling out of Texas was  an emotional and financial burden for her and her family, one she says that no patient should ever have to bear in the midst of a  medical emergency.

Another Texas plaintiff, Samantha Casiano, didn’t have the option of leaving Texas. At 20 weeks along in her pregnancy, she learned her baby had anencephaly—a fatal diagnosis  that means the  brain and skull are not developing as expected.  Doctors explained that if  the fetus  survived until birth, it would not be able to live  more than mere minutes or hours. But with abortion banned in Texas, and lacking the resources to travel out of state for care, Samantha was forced to carry a doomed pregnancy for months.  Her daughter, whom she named Halo, lived for only four agonizing hours. Samantha and her husband held her but couldn’t do anything to ease her suffering as Halo gasped for air before dying. 

Dr. Austin Dennard is an OB-GYN in Texas who discovered her own pregnancy was nonviable soon after Texas’s extreme bans became law. She, too,  was forced to leave the state for the essential abortion care she wanted and needed—care that she had previously been able to provide for her own patients facing similar devastating obstetric situations. After Dr. Dennard learned that one of her patients, Lauren Miller, had joined the lawsuit against Texas, she decided to become a patient plaintiff based on her own experience being forced to flee her home state for basic care.  

As Amanda explains, “This is not a community that anyone wants to voluntarily join; but if you do, you see that it’s really special. It’s beautiful, and the people I’ve met through this work are some of the most important people in my life and always will be.”

These women—over twenty patients and providers—stood together as plaintiffs in a lawsuit versus the state meant to clarify and expand the exceptions to the extreme laws. In bringing the case and telling their stories, they exposed the real, human cost of laws written by politicians, not medical professionals, laws lacking medical clarity and basic human compassion.

The legal battle

The legal battle

Filed in March 2023 by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Zurawski v. Texas was the first lawsuit in over 50 years where patients denied abortion care came forward to sue for policy change based on the harm they had endured. At the heart of the case was a simple, urgent demand: Clarify and specify what “medical emergency” actually means in day-to-day obstetric practice.

On paper, Texas’ abortion bans include exceptions for life-threatening situations, but the language of the exceptions is vague, and the penalties are severe. Doctors risk lengthy prison sentences, huge fines, and the loss of their medical licenses if their medical judgment is later questioned. The result? Even in clear cases of medical need, patients are turned away. Doctors hesitate. Hospitals wait too long.

The plaintiffs argued that these vague laws put lives in danger and create a climate of fear in emergency rooms across Texas. In August 2023, a trial court judge agreed, issuing a temporary injunction to allow doctors to use their best medical judgment. It was a brief victory, as the State immediately appealed, which under Texas law, blocked the decision from going into effect.

Months later, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in the case, overturning the decision. Its ruling completely ignored the plaintiffs in the case and offered no additional guidance for medical professionals, only a firm reminder that the state’s strict bans would remain in place. Once again, doctors were left in limbo and patients were left to suffer the consequences.

Beyond the courtroom

Beyond the courtroom

The Texas Supreme Court ruling was a setback, but it didn’t stop the  plaintiffs from continuing to speak out and advocate for change. 

Amanda Zurawski and her fellow plaintiffs have become powerful voices in the national conversation around reproductive rights. Their stories are now the subject of a documentary, Zurawski v Texas, which brings their experiences to a wider audience and highlights what’s at stake when laws ignore medical reality and nuance. Amanda has continued to share her story, and in early 2025, she was even named one of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year.

When the Texas Legislature reconvened twice in 2025 and tried to introduce more cruel abortion laws, many of the the Zurawski plaintiffs, including Amanda and Samantha, testified at the Capitol and urged politicians to do the right thing to make sure that all Texans and their doctors have the freedom, the dignity and the clarity to receive and and provide medical care without legal interference.

These women aren’t career activists. They’re ordinary citizens put in extraordinary circumstances. They didn’t ask to be in this position, but they’re using it. They are calling for dignity, clarity, and the freedom to get medical care without legal interference.

Amanda often shares that telling her story is painful, but necessary. “The nightmare I endured could be anyone’s reality,” she reminds people, “It can happen to you, or to someone you love.” It’s not about politics. It’s about safety and compassion. It’s about making sure no one else has to go through what they did.

“This was a hard battle, and it still is,” Amanda says of the campaign to change hearts, minds, and laws, “But I believe the most difficult fights are also the ones most worthy of our efforts. You might not get the ‘win’ you were expecting, but you can find victory and success if you expand your view and your definition of ‘winning.’”