“This Court need not weigh into the difficult question of whether, post-Dobbs, an unborn child possesses constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment,” wrote Benjamin Dower, with the attorney general’s special litigation office, in a January filing.

Represented by the attorney general’s office, as is the expectation for all state agencies that find themselves in court, TDCJ and Issa’s supervisors are asking a federal judge in the Western District of Texas to toss the lawsuit.

Despite decisions that “ultimately resulted in tragic consequences” and supervisorial conduct that was “blunt to the point of rudeness,” Dower wrote, the claims don’t prove the agency or its employees broke the law.

Issa and her husband say in court filings that she was seeking to leave work because her unborn child was suffering from a serious health condition, including a lack of oxygen and difficulty breathing during labor.

It refused to take up a related case out of Rhode Island in October, and Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Dobbs ruling that it “is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.”