Five Texas women who say they were denied medically necessary abortions filed a lawsuit against the state Tuesday, saying its strict six-week ban put their lives at serious risk.

The lawsuit , filed on behalf of the women by the Center for Reproductive Rights, includes detailed accounts of their experiences and mirrors what reproductive rights experts warned would happen if the government took control of medical decisions away from patients and their health providers.

The five women Amanda Zurawski, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, Anna Zargarian and Ashley Brandt were each pregnant when their doctors informed them that their fetuses were not viable or would be born with severe abnormalities. Even more urgently, they learned, their own lives were at risk because of the pregnancies.

But because of a 2021 Texas law banning abortions once cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo or fetus, they would not be allowed to receive abortions in their home state, forcing them to either proceed down a dangerous path or seek care several states away.

One of the most harrowing accounts in the lawsuit comes from 35-year-old Zurawski, an Austin woman who was nearly 18 weeks pregnant last August when her doctor diagnosed her with an incompetent cervix, meaning the organ had prematurely dilated and there was no possibility of her pregnancy resulting in a viable baby.