Abortion Ruling Keeps Texas Doctors Afraid of Prosecution

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : Doctors and legal experts said the lack of clarity in the law had deterred doctors from performing abortions that they believed were necessary to preserve the health of the woman.
46% : The court said that the law allowed for abortions based on a doctor's "reasonable medical judgment."
44% : The state and its experts have argued that patients are harmed not by the state law, but by doctors' unwillingness to perform abortions that are allowed under the law.
43% : The court found that the law does not require an imminent threat to the mother's life, but doctors said that in practice, those were the only situations in which abortions have been performed.
42% : "A lot of the confusion and the potentially substandard care that is occurring is because the doctors have misinterpreted the law," said Dr. Ingrid Skop, an obstetrician-gynecologist, in a deposition in the Zurawski case.
40% : That case, Zurawski v. Texas, is aimed at resolving confusion about medical exceptions more generally, and at allowing doctors to perform abortions that they deem medically necessary, and within the bounds of the law, without the fear of civil or criminal punishment.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.