Louisiana woman faces ‘horrifically cruel’ abortion choice over fetus missing skull

A pregnant Louisiana woman faced with either carrying a skull-less fetus to term - for the baby to likely die within hours - or traveling several states away to obtain an abortion has hired a prominent civil rights attorney as she weighs how to move forward.

Nancy Davis has retained lawyer Ben Crump as she becomes the latest to embody the gut-wrenching decisions some women are being forced to make after the US supreme court's decision in June to strip away nationwide abortion rights, according to a statement from the attorney's office.

Davis's home state is among those that have outlawed abortion with very few exceptions. Davis, from Baton Rouge, said publicly that she tried to have her pregnancy aborted after a 10-week ultrasound revealed that her fetus was missing the top of its skull - a condition known as acrania, which kills babies within minutes or hours of birth.

But because acrania was not explicitly included on Louisiana's list of conditions justifying an exception from the state's abortion ban, the hospital that treated Davis turned down terminating her pregnancy, which, as of Friday, was in its 13th week.

The medical center, Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge, directed her to an abortion clinic. But Louisiana's abortion clinics have announced plans to leave the state amid legal battles over the ban's enforcement, the New Orleans news outlet Gambit reported.

The state senator who authored Louisiana's abortion ban, Katrina Jackson, insisted to Baton Rouge TV station WAFB that the hospital should have authorized the termination of Davis's pregnancy, because the statute contains exceptions for fetuses which are not viable outside a mother's womb.

Nonetheless, in his office's statement about working with Davis, Crump said Louisiana's abortion ban was clearly confusing to interpret, and he accused its authors of "inflicting profound emotional and physical trauma" on his client, along with other similarly situated women.

Davis as of Friday was planning to travel to possibly Florida or North Carolina - which have abortion restrictions that she qualifies to be exempt from - rather than give birth to what would be her second child, which she would lose virtually immediately.

The statement about Crump's office working with Davis stopped short of saying what their side's legal plans are, other than noting that she planned to raise money for her out-of-state abortion trip through an online GoFundMe campaign.

But Davis told WAFB she hoped state lawmakers consider additional medical conditions to serve as exceptions to the abortion ban, which threatens providers with criminal prosecution and forfeiting their medical licenses.

"This is one that needs to be in that list [of exceptions]," Davis said of acrania.

The statement from Crump's office added: "Ms Nancy Davis was put in a horrifically cruel position.

"Ms Davis has had to endure unthinkable emotional pain and mounting physical risk."

Other clients of Crump have included relatives of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police; Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen who was shot dead by a neighborhood watch captain; and Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Kentucky police while they searched her home. Crump's office helped the families of Floyd, Martin and Taylor secure tens of millions of dollars in settlement money.

Word of Davis's plight emerged almost at the same time that a Florida court blocked a pregnant 16-year-old girl from having an abortion. The court found the girl was too immature to decide whether or not she should have an abortion and therefore must instead give birth to a child.

Meanwhile, earlier in the summer, a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and impregnated had to travel to neighboring Indiana to terminate her pregnancy because of her state's ban on most abortions. Though some media outlets and rightwing politicians baselessly questioned whether the girl existed or was instead a liberal hoax to stoke support for abortion rights, authorities have since charged a man in connection with the girl's rape, a crime to which he has purportedly confessed.