This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Most Americans are conflicted about abortion, and most are reluctant to condemn a woman who has had one. But they are also reluctant to honor those who have. Not the Bidens.
At the State of the Union on March 7, the Bidens showcased Kate Cox, a woman who left Texas in December to have her baby aborted. The First Lady and the president spoke to her in January after the abortion.
Cox’s child was diagnosed as having Trisomy 18, more popularly known as Edwards syndrome. It is a severe genetic disorder that typically results in a miscarriage during the first three months of pregnancy; 95 percent of these babies do not make it to term. Cox was 20 weeks pregnant when she had her abortion.
According to White House Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, Cox was “forced to go to court to seek permission for the care she needed for a non-viable pregnancy that threatened the life—that threatened her life.” But the justices in Texas who ruled on this case did not all see eye to eye on this issue.
It is true that the District Court of Travis County said that Cox’s doctor, Damla Karsan, concluded that her patient’s life was threatened and merited a D&E abortion. But the Texas Supreme Court noted that “Dr. Karsan did not assert that Ms. Cox has a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ or that, in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires.”
Turning to the medical community, a study published in the American Journal of Perinatology in 2017 concluded there was no increased maternal risk involved in Trisomy 18 pregnancies.
Cheering Cox on is the Center for Reproductive Rights who, with Cox, sued Texas. It is one of the most well-funded pro-abortion institutions in the world. It is disturbed that so many disabilities organizations are decidedly pro-life. “At times,” it says, “the disability rights movement has in fact alienated feminists by forging strategic alliances with anti-abortion groups to advance shared priorities, or by remaining silent on the abortion issue in order to avoid controversy within their own movement.”
In a poll taken last month, 58 percent of Americans believe that babies born with Down syndrome should not be aborted.
It is bad enough that the Bidens are flagging Kate Cox’s decision to abort her baby. It is worse that they deliberately chose a woman to be honored who was carrying a baby with disabilities. Quite frankly, Jill Biden is exploiting this woman to enhance the political capital of her husband.
