The Center for Reproductive Rights is suing the state of Texas on
behalf of 5 women who were denied abortions,
even after their non viable pregnancies, put their lives in danger.
So what has happened in Texas is that abortion providers are so
terrified that they will be sued.
Or that the state will come after them, that they are going above and
beyond in avoiding performing abortions,
even in cases where they probably would not have to deal with lawsuits.
So, if we're talking about a non viable pregnancy, that is putting a woman's
life in danger based on how the law is written, they should be able to do that.
But the law does have a crippling effect and there are portions of the law that
happen to be so vague that it's open for interpretation.
So Texas's 6 week abortion ban is one of the strictest in the country.
Florida is currently considering a similar ban and
the women involved in this suit deserve to be named.
They filed the suit in State Court Monday of this week,
Amanda Zafirovski, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall,
Anna Zardarian and Ashley Brandt.
Now, the lawsuit said that the Texas law is creating confusion among doctors
who are turning away some pregnant women experiencing health
complications because they fear legal repercussions.
So doctors in Texas now face felony criminal charges if they perform
any abortion in all cases,
except those in which the life of the patient is in danger.
If the state does not consider the situation a medical emergency,
the doctor could face legal liability.
And the law also enables as I've shared with you all before individuals
to file civil lawsuits worth tens of thousands of dollars against
anyone found to be assisting a woman in getting an abortion.
That could be anyone, someone who drives a woman to a clinic or
the of course, provider of the abortion could be sued.
Now, according to the lawsuit that the women here are filing one of the doctors,
Damla Karsan has seen that physicians in Texas are even afraid to
speak out publicly about this issue for fear of retaliation.
And has witnessed how widespread fear and
confusion regarding the scope of Texas abortion bans has chilled
the provision of necessary obstetric care including abortion care.
Now, Molly Duane, who is a senior staff attorney with the Center for
Reproductive Rights says this.
We're talking about people who are in medical emergencies who need urgent
medical care and whose physicians are too scared to provide that
care because of the state's laws and because of the state's failure to provide
any clarification around what its laws mean.
Now in the lawsuit, they write that as a direct result of Texas abortion bans,
Texas is in the midst of a healthcare crisis because reproductive
rights has to do with health care.
Make no mistake about it.
And the stories that were about to highlight makes that abundantly clear.
The plaintiffs are mainly seeking greater specificity in the law.
They want protections for women who need the abortion if their life is at risk.
Among those women is Amanda Zarovski, who endured over a year of invasive
surgeries and fertility treatments before she was able to get pregnant.
So keep in mind this is a woman who desperately wanted to have a baby, okay.
At the 18 week mark, she started having concerning symptoms and
contacted her doctor right away.
She was diagnosed with a condition called cervical insufficiency, which I'm
not really like into the language policing thing, but cervical insufficiency.
I just feel like you don't want to hear that [LAUGH] when you go to the doctor,
your cervix is insufficient.
>> But that shouldn't be public facing language, I guess.
>> Yeah, especially wait till you see what happened to her.
Multiple doctors told her that the fetus would eventually die as a result of
the condition.
Eventually, her water broke and she lost all of her amniotic fluid.
And here she is explaining what happened next.
>> What should have happened at that point was they should have been able to
intervene to provide an abortion so that we could ensure the respectful
passing of our daughter Willow and prevent me from getting sick.
But because of the ban in Texas that had just recently been pass and
gone into effect, they couldn't do anything because
Willow's heart was still beating and I wasn't yet sick.
So my life wasn't considered at risk or in danger.
So we just had to wait for one of those things to happen, for
her heart to stop beating or for me to get sick.
So eventually it took 3 days for one of those things to happen.
And in my case, I became septic and spent 3 days in the ICU and
then another 3 days at the hospital being treated for
sepsis, which had and is continuing to have long term
effects on my health and my future fertility.
>> Wow sounds like Texas really cares about human lives, so much so
that they have continued pushing this law that puts women's literal lives at risk.
Now, Chris Hayes went on to ask what she's hoping to see come out of the lawsuit.
Let's watch that.
And then I haven't forgotten about you, John.
I wanna hear what you think after the video.
>> Let's watch.
>> I think first and foremost for me, it's about education.
Abortion is healthcare, plain and simple and
a lot of times it's necessary life saving healthcare sometimes for
the life of the mother in my case.
Sometimes for the life of the fetus and
one of my fellow plaintiffs cases, she was pregnant with twins and
she needed the abortion of one to protect the life of the other.
I think there's a stigma about what someone who needs and
seeks an abortion looks like.
And I want people to understand that it's simply a standard medical procedure and
oftentimes it's needed to save lives.
>> So I'm just gonna say one thing John and it's as a woman,
there is nothing that enrages me more than to watch
politicians use women as political ponds.
So when it comes to their hateful disgusting rhetoric toward the transgender
community, oftentimes what the far right will do is they'll say,
the transgender community, we gotta look out for women.
The transgender communities are racing women, we gotta look out for that.
We care about their lives so much except you don't,
because the second your policies put women's lives at risk.
Very clear you don't really care about their lives.
>> Yeah, I think look, I can only directly speak to how I feel hearing about their
experience of reading about it over the last day.
I imagine for most people watching this,
you were absolutely horrified by anyone having to go through like not only
the physical side of what any of these individual 5 women have gone through.
But the emotional side of as Anna had pointed out some of these people had
been desperately trying, putting time and effort and pain and suffering and
money into trying to get pregnant.
This is not about some sort of strawman version of what
conservatives think like loose women like something like that.
This is a horrific experience.
But I apologize because I'm speaking from the point of view of seeing each one of
those individuals as an actual human being and
the politicians in this case simply do not.
They don't care about those individual, 5 women.
And I'll remind you those 5 women are the five women who are suing.
They're not all of the women who have been affected by this,
even just in Texas, let alone in multiple states.
And it's a reminder by the way that we often throw around terminology in these
bigger debates.
So we know that a lot of different states are doing a variety of different sorts
of abortion bans.
And so this one's a 20 week ban and this one's a 10 week ban, this one's a 6 week
ban and that one has exceptions for rape and incest and that one has an exception.
Ok yeah, we use those terms.
What do they mean in practice?
>> Nothing.
>> When they say it has an exception for incest?
Yeah, what's the exception?
What the reporting requirements?
How much information needs to be provided, the life of the mother?
What do you think that means to most Republican politicians we talk about that
is if it's a thing like how this is a mug, it's a mug I can point to it.
Nobody debates that it's a mug.
It's not like you can get tested for life of the mother and
it comes back positive or negative.
These are evaluations that need to be made and the longer you wait,
the more that you have.
Not only that the person might die but that they might suffer lifelong health
consequences or perhaps lose the ability to have Children in the future.
And every one of these things is not going to be left up to the individual doctors,
even if we didn't have an environment of trying to scare the living hell out of
all the doctors.
So they wouldn't act,
even when it's legal, you're gonna have to be going through politicians.
It's all gonna have to be double checked.
Everything's gonna be delayed intentionally to try to stop it from
happening.
>> Yes, exactly.
>> So even the versions of this law that are supposed to have some sort of
compassion, no, they don't have compassion.
They have bureaucracy run by Republicans.
>> I mean, the exceptions, that's nothing more than a fig leaf
because think about what it's like to be a victim of rape.
In order to, I guess, qualify for an abortion if the state you live in has
restricted abortions with the exception of rape and incest, for instance, right.
You'd have to prove that you got raped.
Like, I mean, how else?
>> That's not traumatic I bet.
>> Well, not only is it traumatic.
Okay, but let's say the woman wants the abortion so badly that she's going to
put herself through that torturous process of proving that she was raped, right.
I'm assuming you would have to be through the courts, how else would you do it?
>> I don't know, in some cases literally how you would do it.
>> Right because they're not genuine about it,
they're not genuine about the exceptions.
The exceptions it's just a talking point.
It's a fig leaf in practice.
None of it actually works.
>> Well, Anna, isn't it a fun coincidence that the side you're gonna have to be
convincing is the side that's predisposed to never believe women when they claim
that they've been raped.
>> Exactly.
There is no reason that the government should be involved in
the conversation between a woman and her doctor, period, okay.
I honestly don't think it's the government's role to get into the nitty
gritty of whether she was raped, whether she's a victim of incest,
whether this might actually, are you serious about having some potential health
risks associated with this pregnancy?
Why would any woman have to explain herself to a politician and
to hear this coming from the people who have marketed themselves as
the small government politicians.
>> I know its ridiculous.
>> Is so ridiculous because this is the most intimate thing imaginable.
Your relationship with your doctor, the conversations you have with your doctor,
the decisions you make about your own body, okay.
Go ahead.
>> And obviously, look, there are a few limited things that Biden has tried to do.
Some of them have been irrelevant in this case, even though they should be relevant.
After all, he had said that federal law is gonna supersede state law when the health
of the pregnant person isn't.
But obviously that doesn't matter again to these doctors because they're terrified.
So there is way more that can be done.
And I'm not an expert, I would turn to the experts, but off the top of my head,
here's what I would do.
I would advocate a couple of billion dollars for
cultural enrichment Republicans love that.
And what it is is you can get money for a plane ticket to a sane state and
hotel rooms for the time that you're gonna be there to visit
a historic document of cultural significance to the United States.
It's gonna be available in one of these states.
You can go see and it just so
happens that it's right next to a facility that will allow you to have an abortion.
You're not spending money to go to the abortion place that just happened
coincidentally to be kind of close to the Declaration of Independence or
whatever stupid document you put there and let them complain about it.
It's just its proximity at that point.
But anyway, make it so that again, just like with the student loan debt,
they're gonna fight you, let them fight you.
Have you be the person that is willing to put not just a little bit of rhetoric but
actual money and your reputation and
your political future on the line to make sure that anyone anywhere
in any of these states can get access to the abortion care that they deserve.
That is achievable in the richest most powerful country in the history of
the world.
>> I wanna end with a comment from one of our viewers,
a member of the show, Trista writes in and
says with all due respect, we don't care as to why the woman wants an abortion.
I don't want to hear health of the mother anymore.
We want the right to an abortion full stop and I am 100% with you Trista.
Thank you for writing in.