An ectopic pregnancy put her life at risk. A Texas hospital refused to treat her.

The 25-year-old woman and her mother blame the state’s abortion ban for a delay in care that doctors say put her “in extreme danger of losing her life”

By Caroline Kitchener
February 23, 2024

ARLINGTON, Tex. — Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz tried not to cry as the doctor in the emergency room delivered one of the most frightening diagnoses a pregnant woman can receive.

The 25-year-old college senior was told she likely had an ectopic pregnancy, a highly dangerous condition where the embryo implants outside of the uterus. Without immediate treatment, the fallopian tube can rupture — and the patient can die.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/23/texas-woman-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/


Disabled Texans face more barriers to accessing abortion

Few organizations track the number of disabled individuals trying to access abortion, but abortion providers and groups that help assist Texans obtain out-of-state abortions say they are falling through the cracks.

BY NEELAM BOHRA, Texas Tribune
FEB. 20, 2024

When disabled Texans used to visit abortion clinics, staffers would remember them. They may have needed in-clinic accommodations or American Sign Language Interpreters, and they appeared infrequently. Still, they came.

But more than a year since performing abortions became illegal in the state of Texas, disabled people have become a “missing population” at the clinics still providing abortions out of state, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/20/texas-abortion-disabled/


Texas conservatives test how far they can extend abortion and gender-transition restrictions beyond state lines

Recent state and local legal maneuvers signal that Texas’ conservative movement could be wading into a complicated constitutional morass the country hasn’t dealt with since before the Civil War.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF AND WILLIAM MELHADO
FEB. 9, 2024

In the months since Texas outlawed abortion and prohibited adolescents from receiving gender-transition care, women have flooded abortion clinics in nearby states and parents with transgender children have moved to places where puberty blockers and hormone therapy remain legal.

So now, Texas conservatives are testing the limits of their power beyond state lines.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-transgender-care-outside-state-borders/


An abortion ban turned a grieving Allie Phillips into a candidate

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post
January 25, 2024

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Framed ultrasounds hang next to Allie Philips’s mantel, a shrine to the child she never had: delicate silver necklaces and receiving blankets embroidered with the name Miley Rose, beside a tiny pink urn containing fetal ashes.

It’s here, by the fireplace, where Phillips runs her in-home day care, greets her mechanic husband at the end of his workday and watches their daughter play with the family’s pit bull rescue. It’s also here where she’s coordinating her campaign for state legislature, motivated by the trauma of seeking an abortion while pregnant with Miley Rose.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/01/25/allie-phillips-tennessee-abortion-ban/


Biden campaign puts reproductive rights front and center as it plans to tie Trump to abortion bans

By Arlette Saenz, CNN
Sun January 21, 2024

The Biden campaign will hit the airwaves in battleground states with its first abortion-focused ad of the year, featuring stark, emotional testimony from a woman personally affected by a state abortion ban who lays the blame directly on former President Donald Trump.

It comes as the campaign is launching a full-court press this week to put abortion rights front and center in the 2024 race, including with events headlined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The push marks the campaign’s first organized effort to emphasize the issue, seeking to further galvanize voters around reproductive rights in the first presidential election after the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion.

(View ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrtvE4bSwKY)
Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/21/politics/biden-campaign-abortion-rights-donald-trump/index.html


I Miscarried in Texas. My Doctors Put Abortion Law First

Jan 21, 2024
By Erin A. Snider

For nearly five hours I alternate between lying in a fetal position on our bathroom floor and curling up against the wall, shivering uncontrollably one moment, and burning up the next.

I vomit three times on the floor. I rock back and forth in tears, repeating out loud, to myself, to God, to my husband and my dog on the other side of the door, to please, please make this stop. The pain is so blinding that I think I'm hallucinating.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/i-miscarried-texas-doctors-abortion-law-1861677


Texas mother Kate Cox on the outcome of her legal fight for an abortion: “It was crushing”

By Tracy Smith
January 14, 2024
Video: 8:32 minutes

Lifelong Texans Kate and Justin Cox were already parents to a young girl and boy when they found out last August that Kate was pregnant again. "We have the two children that we absolutely adore, and yeah, the thought of having a third one added to the family was incredible," Justin said.

But a series of tests revealed the baby they were expecting, a girl, had trisomy 18, a genetic condition that causes severe developmental problems.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-on-her-legal-fight-for-abortion-trisomy-18/


A Young Woman Almost Died Due to Texas’ Abortion Bans. Now She’s Battling to Save Other Women

Jan 12, 2024
by BONNIE FULLER

“I can’t carry a pregnancy again,” Amanda Zurawski said sadly, but matter of factly. The Austin, Texas, resident will never be able to carry a pregnancy again because she was refused a necessary abortion in her state after her water broke at 18 weeks, long before her baby would have been viable.

Tragically, the delay in receiving what used to be normal healthcare allowed a massive bacterial infection to develop and turn into life-threatening sepsis—which ravaged her body and reproductive organs.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/01/12/amanda-zurawski-texas-abortion-kate-cox-republicans-womens-health/


Kate Cox on her struggle to obtain an abortion in Texas

January 12, 2024
CBS News

Kate Cox was pregnant with her third child when she learned the baby had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.  Cox and her husband, Justin, were informed by their doctors that if their child survived the pregnancy, her life expectancy would be at best a week. With the baby's health at risk as well as her own, Kate and Justin Cox sued the state of Texas for the right to have an abortion.

In her first interview since the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, Cox talks about the case, her decision to have an abortion in New Mexico, and more in an interview with Tracy Smith for "CBS News Sunday Morning," to be broadcast Sunday, January 14 on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-interview-on-her-struggle-to-obtain-an-abortion-in-texas/


Do pregnant women have a right to urgent medical care? No, according to a US court

Federal judges sided with a Texas law that allows the state to push pregnant patients to the brink of death before allowing medically necessary abortion

Moira Donegan
Wed 10 Jan 2024

Do doctors have an obligation under federal law to keep their patients alive, even if their patients happen to be pregnant women? Do doctors have an obligation to prevent maiming – or irreversible organ damage, or other kinds of serious bodily harm – and if so, does that obligation extend even to women? Do women have a right to access medically necessary care even if they are pregnant? No, according to the US fifth circuit court.

That’s the conclusion reached by a three-judge panel recently in Texas v Becerra, a case in which Texas sued the Biden administration over guidance that directed all hospitals receiving federal funds to perform “necessary stabilizing treatment” on patients – including abortions on pregnant patients undergoing medical emergencies.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/10/pregnant-women-urgent-medical-care-us-court-texas