You Really Don't Want To Have A Miscarriage In Texas
0/5 stars.
While there are surely many lovely things about the state of Texas (at least the non-wacky parts of it), it’s really not the best place in the world to have a uterus right now. It’s possible there are worse places, like maybe Afghanistan or a Margaret Atwood book, but it ranks pretty low on places one would want to be, were one a sexually active person capable of getting knocked up.
As yet another deeply horrific ProPublica investigation has revealed, getting pregnant in Texas is a relatively dangerous proposition. Because ever since the state banned abortion, first trimester miscarriage-related emergency room blood transfusions have shot up a whopping 54 percent.
You can probably guess why.
At this point, we’ve heard enough horror stories of women in abortion ban states to know how these things can play out. The usual treatment for a miscarriage with serious hemorrhaging is a D&C — which empties out the uterus and allows it to close — and doctors are so afraid of losing their jobs or ending up in jail that they wait until the last minute to perform one — a hesitancy that can have deadly consequences.
Experts who spoke to ProPublica stated that this is likely because patients are sent home from hospitals without being treated and end up coming back later in even worse shape. By the time they are back, they’ve bled so much that they require a blood transfusion. (Unless they’re a Jehovah’s Witness, in which case we suppose they are shit out of luck.)
This is in part because miscarriages are not always a cut-and-dried, you-were-pregnant-and-now-you’re-not-situation.
Via ProPublica:
Texas forbids abortion at all stages of pregnancy — even before there is cardiac activity or a visible embryo. And while the law allows doctors to “remove a dead, unborn child,” it can be difficult to determine what that means during early miscarriage, when an array of factors can signal that a pregnancy is not progressing.
An embryo might fail to develop. Cardiac activity may not emerge when it should. Hormone levels might dip or bleeding might increase. Even if a doctor strongly suspects a miscarriage is underway, it can take weeks to conclusively document that a pregnancy has ended, and all the while, a patient might be losing blood.
[P]hysicians across the state are faced with a law that threatens up to 99 years in prison, and more are making a new calculus around whether to intervene or even tell patients they are likely miscarrying, said Dr. Anitra Beasley, an OB-GYN in Houston. “What ends up happening is patients have to present multiple times before a diagnosis can be made,” she added, and some of those patients wind up needing blood transfusions.
Even scarier — transfusions themselves are not without their own dangers and can trigger allergies, fever, delayed hemolytic reaction, and transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease, lung injury, acute immune hemolytic reaction, renal failure and other serious issues. Additionally, and this is not mentioned in the ProPublica piece, if you lose a truly significant amount of blood, even if you get a transfusion you can end up on full bed rest for several days to several weeks, because a transfusion isn’t going to replace all of the blood you lost and your body will need time to make more (source: I know someone who lost a lot of blood one time).
Of course, if you don’t get treated in time, you can end up bleeding to death.
What happened to Porsha Ngumezi shows how dangerous it can be to delay care, according to more than a dozen doctors who previously reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica.
When the mother of two showed up bleeding at Houston Methodist Sugar Land in June 2023, at 11 weeks pregnant, her sonogram suggested an “ongoing miscarriage” was “likely,” her doctor noted. She had no previous ultrasounds to compare it with, and the radiologist did not locate an embryo or fetus — which Ngumezi said she thought she had passed in a toilet; her doctors did not make a definitive diagnosis, calling it a pregnancy of “unknown location.” After hours bleeding, passing “clots the size of grapefruit,” according to a nurse’s notes, she received two blood transfusions — a short-term remedy. But she did not get a procedure to empty her uterus, which medical experts agree is the most effective way to stop the bleeding. Hours later, she died of hemorrhage, leaving behind her husband and young sons.
So pro-life!
This past weekend, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Life of the Mother Act — a bill supposedly meant to clarify when doctors can perform an abortion to save the life of the mother — into law, presumably to make it less likely that women will die in these situations. But the thing is, it’s unlikely to do much. There are reasons why abortion, like all personal medical decisions, is supposed to be a private decision between patient and doctor, and one of them is because these situations are imperfect. It’s not as though anyone is equipped with an electronic alert system letting doctors know exactly when a miscarriage is over or definitely going to die without treatment.
“It does say that a doctor can use their best medical judgment, but I think that still fleshes out in a court of law,” Shellie Haynes-McMahon of Planned Parenthood Texas told KXAN news. “Yes, a doctor was going to treat their patient according to the Hippocratic oath, according to what they think is best for their patient, but this bill still does not give 100 percent clarity or protections.”
“What I would love to see is doctors not having to hesitate to take care of their patients,” Haynes-McMahon continued. “Doctors not having the voice of a legislator in their mind, and only thinking of what’s the best thing to do to save a patient’s life if necessary, or to save them from gross bodily harm or losing major bodily functions.”
There is no such thing as a safely executed abortion ban. It will always be dangerous and deadly in one way or another, which is why it was made legal in the first place — and this is not a lesson we should need to learn all over again.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
"We're all going to die"
-Joni Ernst
I faced a pregnancy that FIVE physician determined was unsafe and put my life at risk. I inherited a congenital clotting disorder and will bleed like hell because my clottting mechanisms are all fucked up. I required substantial blood transfusions after giving birth to both of my daughters. After my oldest was born I needed FOUR units of blood and following the 6 weeks too early birth of my youngest daughter I required FIVE units.
Because of the sanctimony of insurance through a Catholic hospital they would NOT cover anything related to the termination of the pregnancy. I rather tersely pointed out to one of their employees that I spoke to that they'd be covering the SUBSTANTIAL costs of emergency care when I started bleeding and didn't STOP.
Long, BITTER story short I went to our city's one non-Catholic hospital and had an abortion. Planned Parenthood has already told me that they didn't have the appropriate facilities to care for me in the event of such an emergency and didn't want me losing blood in their clinic while waiting for an ambulance. It cost quite a bit to go to the hospital but it beat the hell out of the likely alternative.
Legislators will now be murdering Texas women suffering pregnancy-related medical emergencies with knowledge and aforethought.
This is cold blooded MURDER.