“It’s like a knife straight to your stomach,” remarked Dr. Todd Ivey, an OB-GYN based in Houston, in response to the recent death of a third woman in Texas due to miscarriage complications, as reported by Courier Texas.
Dr. Ivey emphasized the urgency of addressing these issues, stating, “It’s just like, we’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to do something to stop this. Pregnancy is high-risk enough without putting all these complications on top of it.”
The “complications” referred to by Dr. Ivey pertain to the stringent abortion bans in Texas, which prohibit abortions from the moment of conception.
Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN from Dallas, highlighted the severe penalties faced by doctors under these laws. “They’re terrified that they’re going to be criminalized,” she said.
Texas doctors could face up to 99 years in jail for performing illegal abortions. Additionally, they risk losing their medical licenses, paying a $100,000 fine, and facing civil lawsuits for a bounty of $10,000.
“It’s hardly surprising that pregnant women have become the ‘collateral damage’ of Republican lawmakers’ mission to outlaw abortion no matter what the circumstances,” commented Austin Kaplan, a civil rights attorney in Austin.
Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, sought a legal abortion after discovering a fatal anomaly in her baby that threatened her future fertility and possibly her life, but her petition to the Texas Supreme Court was unsuccessful.
According to ProPublica, since the enactment of Senate Bill 8 on September 1, 2021, three young women have died from miscarriage complications in Texas.
Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year-old, succumbed to a sepsis infection after a miscarriage, less than 24 hours following her first ER visit in Southeast Texas.
Just a day before, she had been celebrating her baby shower, excited about her six-month pregnancy with her daughter, Lillian. After developing a fever and vomiting, Crain was misdiagnosed twice at hospitals before being admitted on October 29, 2023, too late to save her life.
Josseli Barnica, aged 28 and a mother of a toddler, died from sepsis in a Houston hospital. Doctors delayed her miscarriage treatment for 40 hours, leaving her exposed to severe bacterial infection.
Not until her 17-week fetus had no heartbeat did the medical team intervene, but by then, Barnica’s life could not be saved.
Porsha Negumezi, 35, passed away just 10 hours after arriving at a Houston hospital during a miscarriage, losing blood at a dangerous rate.
Courier Texas spoke with five Texas doctors on why Negumezi, Crain, and Barnica died and sought their advice for other pregnant women in the state.
Doctors: 3 miscarrying women in Texas died unnecessarily
Dr. Dennard described these deaths as “unnecessary.”
“It feels like we’re in the ‘olden days,’” commented Dr. Nicole Moretti, an Austin-based OB-GYN. She described the frustration of knowing the necessary treatment but being unable to act due to potential legal repercussions.
None of the interviewed doctors treated the deceased women, but they all have extensive experience with pregnancy complications in Texas. They concurred that these deaths were preventable before the abortion bans.
“Women are literally losing their lives because management (of their care) is being delayed because of these bans,” said Dr. Emily Briggs, a Central Texas family physician.
Dr. Moretti criticized the delays in treatment, attributing them to the need for legal consultations to determine if life-saving interventions can proceed.
Texas law permits abortion only if the woman’s life is at risk or there is a severe risk of major bodily function impairment.
The law also mandates that physicians attempt to save the fetus unless it endangers the patient’s life or health.
Dr. Briggs explained, “If for whatever reason (a woman’s) body has decided that it’s time to push this pregnancy out… and there is still a heartbeat, we cannot as physicians in Texas move forward with assisting the mom with helping her uterus clamp down and cut off those blood vessels, so (instead) she keeps bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.”
Dr. Dennard elaborated on the misunderstanding of miscarriages by lawmakers: “The Texas legislature … because they don’t know anything about medicine, it didn’t realize that women have miscarriages and sometimes you need to do a D&C (dilation and curettage) procedure which I guess is being conflated with abortion.”
Despite medical advancements, there remains significant confusion, Dr. Ivey noted.
“I don’t think our standard (of treating miscarriages) has changed. But how they’ve been handled has changed because of our restrictive abortion laws,” he said, pointing to a climate of fear among healthcare providers.
Doctors in Texas are now hesitant to perform procedures like dilation and curettage or dilation and evacuation to empty a miscarrying woman’s uterus, despite their effectiveness and life-saving potential.
“These aren’t even new cutting edge procedures, but they are lifesaving,” said Dr. Moretti, emphasizing their long-standing use in Texas and globally.
Unfortunately, Negumezi, Crain, and Barnica did not receive these treatments and succumbed to painful symptoms and severe complications.
Dr. Nancy Binford, an OB-GYN from Austin, asserted that Negumezi urgently needed a D&C to halt her critical blood loss.
Gasping for breath, calling out for help
Upon examination, Negumezi was given misoprostol to aid her miscarriage, a decision Dr. Binford questioned, believing it could worsen her condition.
“It would have made her uterus just do more of the contracting,” Dr. Binford explained.
Given her severe blood loss and two blood transfusions, Dr. Binford said Negumezi should have been prioritized for surgery.
“I’ve done a 100 rush backs in my 24 years (of practice) for an urgent issue like this to have a D&C,” she stated.
Sadly, Negumezi did not receive timely intervention, and even as her condition deteriorated with chest pains, further tests were not conducted. She later died, gasping for air, as her husband called out for help.
Dr. Dennard explained, “What happens when they’re bleeding out at a certain point, they’ve lost too much blood to support their cardiac activity. You lose so much blood your body is no longer able to create the clotting factors that are needed to support the blood that you have circulating in your body.”
The tragic deaths of these women serve as a stark warning for pregnant women in Texas and their families.
Dr. Ivey cautioned that women experiencing complications can appear healthy before their condition rapidly worsens.
How women can protect themselves
“If you are experiencing serious symptoms while miscarrying, you have to move very quickly to prevent (your) organs from failing,” advised Dr. Ivey.
Despite the limited documented cases of miscarriage-related deaths, the maternal mortality rate in Texas rose by 56% from 2019 to 2022, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.
Attorney Kaplan advises pregnant women in Texas to have a “to go bag” ready in case they need to leave the state for necessary medical care.
For those unable to leave Texas, Dr. Binford recommends seeking treatment in large urban hospitals, which are better equipped to handle complex cases.
She also suggests hospitals affiliated with medical schools for quick access to ethics committees that include legal advisors.
Texas health lawyer Leah Stewart echoed the importance of seeking care in large hospitals for severe complications, emphasizing their experience and resources.
“You have to keep ramping up your fit throwing” if you aren’t receiving the necessary attention, she advised.
Ryan Hamilton, a Dallas-area father, shared a harrowing experience where his wife nearly died during a miscarriage. He emphasized the life-threatening nature of these situations.
After a series of medical visits and treatments, Hamilton’s wife collapsed at home but survived thanks to his prompt actions.
“Women are dying… under the circumstances we went through.. If I wouldn’t have been home to find my wife, she would have been one of those women… I could have lost her….it’s like, ‘oh my God, I really could have.’ That’s reality and that’s hard,” he reflected.
This story was originally published by Courier DFW.
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