President Joe Biden used the tragic abortion story of Kate Cox during his State of the Union address on Thursday to call for the restoration of Roe v. Wade, a now-defunct Supreme Court decision that had guaranteed the invented Constitutional “right” to abortion in the U.S. for more than 50 years.
First Lady Jill Biden brought Cox as her guest, a Dallas, Texas, mother who left the state to abort her disabled baby — who was diagnosed with Trisomy 18 — at around 21 weeks of pregnancy.
“Joining us tonight is Kate Cox, a wife and mother from Dallas. When she became pregnant again, the fetus had a fatal condition,” Biden said during his speech. “Her doctors told Kate that her own life and her ability to have children in the future were at risk if she didn’t act. Because Texas law banned abortion, Kate and her husband had to leave the state to get the care she needed.”
“What her family has gone through should never have happened as well. But it is happening to so many others. There are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need,” he added. “Many of you in this Chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom. My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”
Biden proceeded to directly address Supreme Court justices who were in attendance, criticizing their Dobbs decision.
“In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court majority wrote the following — and with all due respect justices — ‘Women are not without electoral…and political power’ – you’re about to realize just how much you’re right about that,” he said.
He concluded by claiming that abortion will give Democrats a wide-scale victory in November and called on Americans to vote for lawmakers that will send him legislation enabling him to restore Roe.
“I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again!” he said. “America cannot go back. I am here tonight to show the way forward. Because I know how far we’ve come.”
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In Texas, abortion is outlawed except to save the life of the pregnant woman or prevent serious risk to her physical health, and a doctor can be prosecuted for performing the procedure.
Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, sued the state of Texas with The Center for Reproductive Rights to obtain an abortion after she learned that her unborn baby had Trisomy 18, otherwise known as Edwards syndrome.
Trisomy 18 is a very severe genetic condition that can cause multiple birth defects — 95 percent of babies with the condition do not survive full-term, and ten percent of babies born with the condition typically do not survive past their first year, according to the Cleveland Clinic. There are rare cases of people born with Trisomy 18 living much longer, such as the daughter of former Republican U.S. senator and pro-life advocate Rick Santorum, Isabella, who is now 15 years old. A 2020 scientific journal also describes a 26-year-old woman diagnosed with the condition who has “severe growth and intellectual limitations” but has lived much longer than expected.
The lawsuit alleged that Cox had been to three different emergency rooms within a month due to “severe cramping and unidentifiable fluid leaks.” The lawsuit also alleged that her history of having two prior cesarean surgeries meant that continuing the pregnancy “put[s] her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy.”
The complaint argued that it is Dr. Damla Karsan’s (Cox’s healthcare provider) “good faith belief and medical recommendation” that Cox’s circumstances “fall within the medical exception to Texas’s abortion bans and laws.” The lawsuit ultimately asked the court to block the state from enforcing its abortion laws to allow Karsan to abort Cox’s unborn baby.
Ultimately, the Texas Supreme Court halted a lower court ruling in December of 2023 allowing Cox, who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, to have her unborn baby aborted. The state’s high court blocked a temporary restraining order from Democrat Travis County District Judge Maya Fuerra Gamble after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the court to intervene.
As to the Texas Supreme Court’s reasoning, justices wrote in part that Dr. Karsan never actually asserted that Cox had a “life-threatening physical condition” or that “in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires.”
“No one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated. Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis,” the justices wrote.
“Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses,” they continued. “The exception requires a doctor to decide whether Ms. Cox’s difficulties pose such risks. Dr. Karsan asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.”
Cox ended up leaving Texas to have her baby aborted at around 21 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions at that stage of pregnancy typically are done with a dilation and evacuation (D & E) procedure, which can involve “crushing, dismemberment and removal of a fetal body from a woman’s uterus, mere weeks before, or even after, the fetus reaches a developmental age of potential viability outside the mother,” according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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