Over a dozen women are suing Texas after being denied abortions they say were medically necessary.
A Texas law that bans all abortions - except in dire medical circumstances - is one of the strictest introduced since the right to the procedure was overturned. Critics say it is forcing many women, and their doctors, to choose between breaking the law and making the right decision for their health.
In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, giving states the right to ban abortion, 13 states have passed near total bans. Texas is the largest, and one of the strictest, banning all abortions from the moment of conception, except in cases of a "life-threatening physical condition" or "a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function". Breaking the law can carry a $100,000 fine and up to life in prison.
But doctors told her they couldn't terminate her pregnancy, as under the state's laws, it was a crime to perform an abortion when there was a foetal heartbeat, unless the mother's life was threatened. Essentially, the message was that she was not sick enough yet to legally justify an abortion."My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, I couldn't put together a sentence," she said.
Anti-abortion advocates and politicians who support the ban say that the Texas laws were always written clearly, but the new legislation will help make it more explicit. Their position mirrors that of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which says each patient brings unique medical considerations to the table.
She mostly saw low-income patients, and she felt she was being asked to practice medicine in an unethical way. "The emotional torture of those two weeks cannot be understated. I don't know how to explain to people how absolutely terrible it is knowing you're carrying around a baby that isn't going to live and you have to be very visibly pregnant," she said.
At her 17-week anatomy scan this past February, the doctor saw the baby's brain matter herniating out of her skull, a condition known as encephalocele. Taylor recalled the moment when the doctor told her that the baby would not survive: "I just started screaming, I don't know what took over me."
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