In March 2023, we became two of the first women to sue Texas over its abortion bans. While pregnant with twins, we’d each learned that one of our twins had severe complications that were threatening the lives of the other — and our own. Yet, we were denied potentially live-saving abortions. So we asked the state a simple question: How dead did we have to be to receive healthcare that could save our viable babies and our own lives?
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called us “woke” for daring to ask such a question.
After Paxton defeated U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary this week, we felt compelled to share the grisly reality behind that question.
Ashley’s daughter, Isla, was diagnosed with acrania, an always-fatal condition in which the skull never forms. On the ultrasound, Ashley and her husband, Marcus, could see their daughter’s brain matter flowing out of her skull. Every day Isla kept growing, the amniotic fluid broke down more of her brain tissue — and put her twin sister, Marley, in greater danger. Ashley’s risk of miscarriage and premature labor was high, which meant she stood to lose both babies. Marley might survive if born early, but only after months in intensive care, if she lived at all.
Lauren’s son, Thomas, was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a genetic disorder that ravages every organ in the body. Half of where his brain should have been was nothing but fluid, swelling his skull outward. From 12 weeks to the end of pregnancy, Trisomy 18 results in miscarriage in nearly three of every four pregnancies. The doctors, specialists, and genetic counselors all agreed: Every day Thomas kept growing, he put his healthy twin brother, Henry, and Lauren herself at greater risk. And Lauren was already gravely sick, vomiting as many as 20 times an hour. On another emergency room visit, she learned she was heading toward organ failure — but still not near death enough for an abortion that would save her health and Henry’s life.
All her doctors could say was, “I’m so sorry.”
We were the lucky ones. We had the money, the time, and the childcare to make the trip to Colorado for the care Texas denied us. There, we each had a single fetal reduction, a procedure that terminates one pregnancy in the case of multiple pregnancies, which has been found to reduce preterm birth and pregnancy complications without increasing pregnancy loss.
Two of our co-plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski and Kristen Anaya, were not so lucky: they went septic waiting to find out whether they were dead enough for an abortion, after their water broke far too early for their daughters to survive.
Texas lawmakers pioneered the “vigilante” civil enforcement mechanism that first got around legal protections for abortion while Roe v. Wade was precedent. The passage of Senate Bill 8 in 2021, which bans physicians from performing abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected, made Texas the most restrictive state on abortion in the country — and the state to watch. Last year, Texas passed House Bill 7, essentially replicating the bounty hunter law, this time for abortion medication like mifepristone and misoprostol.
These are the laws that Paxton promotes.
There are exceptions for certain anomalies, which passed in May 2025 after a bipartisan effort to help clean up the mess of Texas’ abortion and was signed into law as Senate Bill 31, or the Life of the Mother Act. The bill aligns language among the state’s myriad abortion laws and codifies court rulings, as well as requiring education for both doctors and lawyers on the law’s nuances. However, it doesn’t expand abortion access or make any exceptions for rape, incest, teen pregnancies and fatal fetal abnormalities.
In plain language, Paxton said we weren’t dead enough for an abortion — that our doctors were right to deny us care. Then he turned around and said we should sue those same doctors for denying us care. Never mind that in Lauren’s case, her doctor was Dr. Austin Denard, a co-plaintiff asking the same question: How dead do we need to be?
Paxton never answered that question. Everything he has done since tells us his answer: He wants Texas women closer to dead.
When our friend, Kate Cox, asked the courts for an abortion in the middle of a medical emergency — an unviable pregnancy threatening her future fertility — a judge sided with her. Paxton’s response was to threaten every hospital in the Houston area where her doctor had admitting privileges with civil and criminal charges.
The court had spoken. But Paxton — indicted, impeached, and divorced by his wife on “Biblical grounds” — brought it to the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled that Kate Cox didn’t qualify for an exemption.
Paxton has demonstrated that he does not believe in your right to make decisions for your own family. We know, first-hand, that he does not believe in your right to protect a healthy, wanted baby. That he does not believe the law applies to him. That he is too dangerous to represent Texas.
Maybe you think this could never happen to you. Neither did we. Every one of these stories began with a wanted pregnancy and a family trying to do right by the people they love. If you have ever wondered whether your vote could matter, let us be clear: for the mother of your children, for a wanted pregnancy, for anyone you would carry into an emergency room, your vote for the Texas’ next senator is a matter of life and death. We watched Paxton dismiss our lives and the lives of our children. Don’t give him the chance to do it to your family, too.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions presented by guest contributors to The Barbed Wire do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the company, the newsroom, its staff, advisers, or advertisers.
