In post-Roe Texas, 2 mothers with traumatic pregnancies walk very different paths
In “In post-Roe Texas, 2 mothers with traumatic pregnancies walk very different paths,” NPR features the stories of Texan mothers Samantha Casiano and Lauren Miller. Both women became plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas—the Center’s case seeking to clarify the state’s “emergency medical” exceptions under its extreme abortion bans—after they were unable to get abortions in Texas despite facing severe pregnancy complications.
While Miller had the time and resources to seek abortion care outside Texas, Casiano did not, and she was forced to complete her pregnancy knowing that her daughter would not survive.
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Zurawski v. Texas: Complete Case Information
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In the NPR piece, Miller, who was eventually able to obtain an abortion in Colorado, describes struggling to find out her options from physicians afraid to say the word ‘abortion’ aloud.
“It kind of felt like this secret mission—like, a we’ve-got-to-escape kind of feeling,” Miller told NPR. “I’m from Texas. I’m an eighth-generation Texan. To be feeling like I needed to escape the state was just a bizarre sensation.”
Casiano also describes asking her OB-GYN about her options—and being told that, because of Texas’s abortion ban, she had none but to continue carrying the pregnancy. She went into labor at 33 weeks; her daughter survived for only four days.
A person of faith, Casiano said at that time that she wanted an abortion to be able to let her baby rest sooner: “I should have had that choice—that right over my own body and over my daughter’s body to be able to tell my daughter, ‘It is time for you to rest,’ because she was going to end up having to rest anyways.”
Read the article here: