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/


Four doctors found guilty of manslaughter for the death of Valentina Milluzzo in 2016, who had been 19 weeks pregnant with twins

SOURCE: La Sicilia
28 October 2022   
(translated from Italian)

Three doctors were acquitted, and four were sentenced to six months each for manslaughter, though with suspended sentences. This was the verdict of the Criminal Court of Catania in the trial of seven doctors from the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Department of the Cannizzaro Hospital, concerning the death of Valentina Milluzzo, a 32-year-old woman hospitalised in her 19th week of pregnancy, who died on 16 October 2016, after having lost, as a result of two separate miscarriages, the twins she was expecting thanks to assisted fertilisation.

Acquitted, on the grounds that "the facts do not exist" (to find them guilty), were Paolo Scollo, Head Doctor of the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Department, Andrea Benedetto Distefano, the ward doctor, and Francesco Paolo Cavallaro, the anesthesiologist.

Sentenced to six months each in prison, suspended, were the doctors Silvana Campione, Giuseppe Maria Alberto Calvo, Alessandra Coffaro and Vincenzo Filippello, who were "on duty in the ward and in the delivery room, on alternating shifts" between 15 and 16 October 2016. The Court also ordered the payment of a provisional amount of € 30,000 to the victim's sister, Angela Maria Milluzzo, who had become a civil party in the suit, assisted by lawyer Salvatore Catania Milluzzo.

According to the prosecution, the four doctors were guilty of "contributing, in cooperation between them, to the death of the pregnant woman" who had been hospitalised because of the serious risk during the miscarriage of her twin pregnancy.

The Public Prosecutor's Office accused the four doctors of "professional negligence" due to "imprudence, negligence and incompetence". In particular, "the failure to implement adequate antibiotic therapy" on both the 14th and 15th of October, "the failure to promptly recognise sepsis in progress", "the failure to collect samples for microbiological examination", "the failure to promptly remove the source of the infection: the fetuses and placentas" and "the failure to administer blood transfusion during surgery".

All the above described events, said the Public Prosecutor of Catania, would have caused the “transformation of sepsis into irreversible septic shock with consequent multiple organ failure and disseminated intravascular coagulation", which caused the death of the patient.

It was not disputed in the trial that the doctors were conscientious objectors. The case was also handled by the Ministry of Health, which sent inspectors to Cannizzaro Hospital.

Source: https://www.lasicilia.it/cronaca/news/catania-3-medici-assolti-e-4-condannati-per-la-morte-di-valentina-alla-19-settimana-di-gravidanza-1934813/


How women are resisting Poland’s abortion ban

By Costanza Spocci
26 May 2022

Warsaw, Poland – On a cold, hazy December morning, the Ryz sisters stand on a sidewalk of a busy street in Warsaw.

“Shall we go to church?” 24-year-old Olympia asks her sister, Melania, grinning and holding up a dozen pink, yellow and grey stickers with the words, “Abortion is OK”, and the hotline numbers and social media profiles of Polish pro-choice organisations.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/5/26/how-women-are-resisting-polands-abortion-ban


Killed by abortion laws: five women whose stories we must never forget

As the US supreme court threatens to undo 49 years of access to safe and legal terminations, five women who died because of bans on abortion stand as warnings of what is at stake globally

Joe Parkin Daniels, Sarah Johnson, Weronika Strzyżyńska, Kaamil Ahmed and Mercy Kahenda
Sat 7 May 2022

[Stories about:]

Savita Halappanavar, Ireland
Olga Reyes, Nicaragua
‘Izabela’, Poland
‘Manuela’, El Salvador
‘Mildred’, Kenya

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/may/07/killed-by-abortion-laws-five-women-whose-stories-we-must-never-forget


USA – As a med student, he saw women nearly die from illegal abortions. At 83, he sees no end to his work

BY MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE, HOUSTON BUREAU CHIEF
Photography by GINA FERAZZI
MARCH 10, 2022

BOULDER, Colo. — Dr. Warren Hern doesn’t have to imagine what could befall many women in America if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe vs. Wade.

In 1963, he was a medical student working nights at Colorado General Hospital in Denver. Women would arrive in septic shock, some probably hours from death. “Nobody talked about why they were there,” Hern recalled.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-10/abortion-doctor-fears-roes-fall


Death threats and phone calls: the women answering cries for help one year on from Poland’s abortion ban

As new laws hit the most vulnerable pregnant women in need of care, volunteers struggle to help those unable to access safe abortions

Rosie Swash and Weronika Strzyżyńska in Warsaw
The Guardian
Sun 23 Jan 2022

An Abortion Dream Team member became the first Polish abortion activist to face the prospect of trial in September, after a man notified the police that his wife ordered abortion pills online. The case is ongoing.

Ferenc believes the latest changes did not fully appease the ruling Law and Justice party’s (PiS) religious base. “Before, abortion was not a topic, no one wanted to talk about it. Now the anti-abortion groups on whose support PiS is relying are demanding blood.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/23/death-threats-and-phone-calls-the-women-answering-cries-for-help-one-year-on-from-polands-abortion-ban


Poland clarifies abortion law after protests over mother’s death

November 8, 2021

Poland has reminded doctors that abortions are legal
in some cases after the country's strict laws on the practice were linked to a
pregnant women's death.

The guidance was issued on Sunday, a day after mass protests over the death.
The 30-year-old woman died of sepsis 22 weeks into her pregnancy, which had
complications.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59206683


Poles march against abortion ban after pregnant woman’s death

Protesters link woman’s death by septic shock to new restrictions on ending unviable pregnancies

Weronika Strzyżyńska
Sat 6 Nov 2021

“Her heart was beating too,” thousands of protesters across Poland chanted on Saturday during demonstrations sparked by the death of a pregnant 30-year-old woman in hospital. Her family say that the hospital staff refused her life-saving health care because they were afraid of breaking the country’s strict abortion law.

Demonstrators were joined by senior opposition politicians, including Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/06/poles-march-against-abortion-ban-after-pregnant-womans-death


Massive protests in Poland after the death of a woman who was denied an abortion

HELEN HERNANDEZ
Nov 6, 2021

Thousands of people took to the streets in various cities of Poland to protest after the death of a woman who was denied an abortion, in a country with one of the most restrictive laws on the legal interruption of pregnancy (ILE) in Europe.

Under the motto “Not one more”, the most massive protest took place in Warsaw, where the protesters marched from the headquarters of the Constitutional Court – which with its 2020 ruling made abortion illegal in almost all its causes – towards the national Ministry of Health.

Continued: https://oicanadian.com/massive-protests-in-poland-after-the-death-of-a-woman-who-was-denied-an-abortion/


Opposition leader blames woman’s death on ‘in-human’ abortion law

NEWS & POLITICS
NOVEMBER 05, 2021

Donald Tusk, the leader of Poland's main opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), has said that “ideology” and an “in-human law” were responsible for the death of a pregnant woman who failed to get an abortion.

The 30-year-old woman died in a hospital in the southern town of Pszczyna in September but her case came to light when a lawyer working on behalf of her family published details.

Continued: https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/opposition-leader-blames-womans-death-on-in-human-abortion-law-25823