At the beginning of last month, the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton excitedly announced a victory in the most Orwellian of ways — with a press release reading, and I quote, “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a major win protecting the rights of Texas hospitals and doctors to refuse to provide abortions that are prohibited by State law.”
“Protecting the rights of Texas hospitals and doctors” to do the things the state of Texas is forcing them to do. Isn’t that something?
This was in reference to the Supreme Court of the United States refusing to hear a Biden administration appeal that would have required the state of Texas to allow physicians in hospitals to perform abortions in emergency situations, if those hospitals want to continue receiving funds from Medicare.
Had Nevaeh Crain been able to get such emergency treatment, she might be alive today.
According to yet another harrowing ProPublica investigation into the death of a pregnant woman who needed an abortion or miscarriage care in abortion-ban states, 18-year-old Crain went to the emergency rooms at two hospitals a total of three times, trying to obtain treatment, ultimately dying before she was able to receive any.
Crain started feeling sick at her baby shower. She was feverish and vomiting and her boyfriend decided it was best to take her to the emergency room at Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, where she waited four hours to be seen, while throwing up into a pan.
Via ProPublica:
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.
The reason, by the way, for the two ultrasounds, was that ultrasounds don’t automatically save information and the state of Texas requires documentation that the fetus was dead before doctors could do anything to remove it.
Under normal circumstances, in a normal state with normal abortion rights, none of that would have happened. No one would ignore a pregnant woman saying she had cramps, no one would send a pregnant woman home with sepsis and no one would have made her wait for that extra ultrasound to use as evidence. Under normal circumstances, Neveah Crain would have survived this. She didn’t, because she lived in Texas.
Crain and her mother, by the way, were both opposed to abortion for religious reasons, with Crain saying she only believed it should be used in situations of rape or health emergencies. As we have learned, while that is perhaps something that works for an individual making their own decisions about their own healthcare, those exceptions don’t actually work in real life when the state is the one making the decisions for you.
“This is a major victory at SCOTUS that will protect Texas medical providers from being forced to violate State law,” said Attorney General Paxton, of the Supreme Court’s decision in October. “No Texas doctor should be forced to violate his or her conscience or the law just to do their job.”
Unless, of course, their conscience tells them to do what is necessary save a dying pregnant woman, in which case they must violate it or run the risk of going to prison or losing their license.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
“No Texas doctor should be forced to violate his or her conscience or the law just to do their job.”
If a "Texas doctor" feels conscientious objection to saving a woman's life 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵, that is a person who shouldn't be a doctor.
Doctors who fail to take appropriate action to save a woman's life 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵 because they fear the long, insane arm of Texas law, on the other hand, are well and truly trapped in a crisis of conscience, which has a lot more future than being dead
Neveah Crain's death is nothing less than cold blooded murder. Concerning symptoms that should've been evaluated FIRST were ignored or dismissed by clinicians too afraid of a lawsuit to live up to their respective medical affirmations.
This hits FAR too close to home with me. Had I been living in Idaho a few years ago under laws like these I would've been left to bleed to death.
I am too bitter, resentful, heartbroken and just damned ANGRY at the moment. I'm out for a while.