The Texas state Supreme Court on Tuesday takes up a lawsuit in which plaintiff’s allege the state’s abortion laws are harming women facing pregnancy complications.

The suit was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and has since grown to 22 plaintiffs, including 20 patients and two doctors. 

They allege that the medical exceptions in the state’s abortion laws—which ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy—are too narrow to protect patients suffering complications from their pregnancies.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is defending the law, and was set to argue that the plaintiffs’ case should be dismissed. 

Texas is one of 11 states with near-total bans on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In October, two Texas jurisdictions—Lubbock County and Amarillo—sought to add further restrictions to the state’s abortion bans by taking up measures to outlaw transporting another person on their roads for the purpose of seeking an abortion.

Earlier this month, Texas state Sen. Nate Johnson (D) introduced a bill to prohibit such travel bans for people seeking abortions, asserting that it infringes on the Constitutional right to interstate travel.

Major highways stretch across both Lubbock and Amarillo into neighboring New Mexico, where abortion is legal—though a handful of towns within that state are in legal disputes with their Attorney General over locally-imposed abortion bans, calling themselves “sanctuaries for the unborn.”

PHOTO: Texas state Supreme Court building

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