The Texas Supreme Court has halted a lower court ruling that would have allowed a Dallas woman to have an abortion after she learned the fetus has a fatal condition.

Late on Friday night the state’s court said that ‘without regard to the merits’ of the case it is taking an administrative stay before ruling. 

The decision came in response to an appeal from Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who opposed the woman’s abortion.

The stay means an earlier order from a judge in Travis County district court permitting the abortion is now on hold.

That order allowed the woman, Kate Cox, to obtain an abortion and protected her doctor from civil or criminal liability under Texas’s strict overlapping abortion bans.

‘We fear that justice delayed will be justice denied,’ said Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Cox. 

Mother-of-two Cox was granted permission to have an abortion after discovering her 20-week fetus was fatally impaired and could jeopardize her chances of another child. 

The 31-year-old told the state court in Texas earlier this month that she had received emergency medical treatment four times since becoming pregnant with a baby that doctors expect to be stillborn.

A judge granted her a temporary order citing the threat to her fertility in the first case of its kind since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade last year.

‘This law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,’ said State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday threatened to prosecute any doctors involved in providing an emergency abortion to a woman, objecting to the finding and said the ‘activist’ judge’s order does ‘not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.’

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The letter was sent to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she would provide the abortion to Cox, has admitting privileges. 

Texas became one of 12 states to outlaw nearly all abortions within hours of the Roe v Wade decision in June 2022.

Fewer than 50 abortions have been performed in the state since then, compared to more than 16,000 in the five months before the ban.

Cox delivered her two previous children by caesarian and said doctors had warned that another C-section at full term would threaten her ability to carry another child.

They also told her the fetus had a diagnosis of trisomy and could not survive more than a week if carried to full-term, warning her that an induced labor could rupture her uterus if it died in the womb.

She went to court after learning of her fetus’s diagnosis at 18 weeks, seeking approval for an immediate abortion.

‘I do not want to continue the pain and suffering that has plagued this pregnancy or continue to put my body or my mental health through the risks of continuing this pregnancy,’ she wrote in an editorial for the Dallas Morning News.

‘I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.’

Although Texas allows exceptions under its ban, doctors and women have argued that the requirements are so vaguely worded that physicians still won’t risk providing abortions, lest they face potential criminal charges or lawsuits.

Her suit said doctors told her their ‘hands are tied’ under Texas´ abortion ban.