by MARY TUMA
Dr. Damla Karsan lives in fear for her patients—and for all pregnant Texans.
The Houston OB-GYN has spent the last four years painfully navigating the state’s draconian abortion bans, oftentimes for patients who face severe complications. With vaguely defined exceptions for medical emergencies, the law has forced doctors to either delay or deny life-saving care out of worry they could face lawsuits or prison time for performing pregnancy termination.
Karsan knows the risks well: When she promised to perform abortion care in 2023 for Kate Cox, a Dallas mother who saw her health steadily deteriorate after doctors failed to terminate her fatal pregnancy, she was met with direct threats of prosecution from Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cox eventually fled the state. Paxton’s attacks on reproductive healthcare workers have only escalated since then, most recently with the arrest of a Houston-area midwife for allegedly giving abortion pills to a patient—the first criminal charges under the state’s ban that took effect after the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade.
Karsan has had other patients who were hemorrhaging during a miscarriage—just a few steps away from death—and still faced delayed care at the ER. Some of her patients are too scared to even get pregnant, while others have fled Texas in order to start their families safely. Her experiences mirror the flood of traumatic stories from other Texans and providers.
“These laws are torturing women, there’s no other way to put it,” Karsan told the Texas Observer in between deliveries from her practice just south of the Houston Medical Center. “It is absolutely horrible having to try to help patients get care when the state has barred us from using our best medical judgment.”
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