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At least five women have said the restrictions have endangered their lives.

Back in 2021, the state of Texas enacted a sweeping, near-total ban on abortion procedures, allowing individuals to file lawsuits against anyone who provides or receives a procedure and only permitting abortions in the most dire medical circumstances. The effectiveness of this ban was limited until the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, after which it went into full effect.

Since then, numerous reports have come in of women needing an abortion for medical reasons and being unable to get one. This stringent policy has directly endangered the lives of these women, who were forced to leave the state in the middle of labor to get an abortion elsewhere. At least five women, with the backing of two doctors and the Center for Reproductive Rights, have filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas for needlessly endangering their lives.

“[The women] have been denied necessary and potentially life-saving obstetrical care because medical professionals throughout the state fear liability under Texas’s abortion bans,” the lawsuit reads.

A lawsuit filed by five women against Texas aims to hold the state accountable for the consequences of multiple harmful abortion bans on pregnant people facing obstetric complication.https://t.co/pvZz7CB8gv

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“Just because Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land does not mean that women and pregnant people are without constitutional and basic human rights,” says Molly Duane, senior staff attorney with the CRR. “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 law means.”

The plaintiffs are hoping to have a federal judge official clarify the exceptions to Texas’s abortion ban.