A pregnant Texas teenager died after three separate visits to an emergency room in attempts to get care in another incident that has highlighted the medical impact of the loss of abortion rights in the US.
Nevaeh Crain, 18, had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours in October 2023, each time returning home feeling worse than before. Crain was only diagnosed with strep throat upon her first visit. The hospital did not investigate her sharp abdominal cramps, according to reporting by ProPublica.
Crain is one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban brought in after the US supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion. Josseli Barnica, 28, died after a miscarriage in 2021.
These incidents are seen as evidence of a new reality in which US healthcare professionals in states with new tough abortion restrictions are hesitant or even afraid to give care to pregnant mothers over fear of legal repercussions. Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, regardless of whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.
View image in fullscreen Candace Fails visits the grave of her daughter, Nevaeh Crain, and granddaughter, Lillian Faye Broussard, in Buna, Texas, on 24 October. Photograph: Danielle Villasana for ProPublica
Medical records indicate Crain tested positive for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition, on her second visit. But doctors still cleared her to leave after apparently confirming that her six-month-old fetus still had a heartbeat.
On her third trip to the hospital, Crain was finally moved to intensive care after an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise”, reported ProPublica.
She died hours later after suffering organ failure. A nurse noted that her lips had turned “blue and dusky”, ProPublica said. The teen would have turned 20 this Friday.
Though Texas retains exceptions for life-threatening conditions, the fear and uncertainty instilled in doctors over which treatments may or may not be considered a crime has had devastating effects on women in need of healthcare.
The result is that in states with abortion bans, patients are often traded between hospitals in order to shirk responsibility and argue about legalities, an act which wastes precious and potentially life-saving time.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University, told ProPublica.
The president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, said Crain’s death underscored the deadly threat posed by abortion bans.
“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence,” Timmaraju said in a statement.
Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent Texas senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against the Democrat Collin Allred.
“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom,” including by supporting Allred and Kamala Harris against Trump in the 5 November election.
By doing so, “we can restore the right to abortion and these bans,” Timmaraju said.
thedrmadhatter on November 1st, 2024 at 17:43 UTC »
20k kids in foster care in Texas this year. That number should be zero given how strongly they supposedly care about the lives of children.
syser on November 1st, 2024 at 16:31 UTC »
“Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.”
Immoral right wing policies are designed to harm women, children, and working class people. Not to mention our environment, our education and pretty much all the good things about the United States. Please vote 🗳️
arbutus1440 on November 1st, 2024 at 16:01 UTC »
Just so we're clear: This is one of many ways in which these backwards abortion laws kill women.
Obstetricians clearly and loudly said this would happen. And it is happening.
So nobody get it twisted, this kind of thing was 100% predictable and preventable. But it will continue to happen as long as we let these regressive demagogues set policy. It's just a matter of whether we let them. There is very little else to it.