Texas’ abortion pill lawsuit against New York doctor marks new challenge to interstate telemedicine

By  SEAN MURPHY, MICHAEL HILL and GEOFF MULVIHILL
December 13, 2024

Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.

Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pills-lawsuit-shield-laws-texas-telemedicine-74c9b7d5c3c152e4c8f199b29132daec


Abortion bans are killing women — and states like Texas want to hide the truth

As the laws’ predictable harms come to light, anti-abortion groups want us to look away.

Dec. 3, 2024
By Susan Rinkunas

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision two and a half years ago, state abortion bans have restricted pregnant women’s access to emergency medical care. And as the predictable harms — up to and including death — come to light, some states are acting as if they want to hide them from the public.

…from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased by 56%, compared with 11% nationwide. But rather than investigate, the state is essentially admitting that the bodies are piling up faster than the state can address them. Its solution is not to dedicate more time and effort — like, perhaps, increasing the size of the 23-member committee — but to simply brush these women’s lives under the rug and skip ahead to 2024.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/texas-georgia-women-deaths-abortion-ban-rcna182540


A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

by Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana
Oct. 30, 2024

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban


The Underground Network Fighting for Teen Abortion Access in Texas

How a group of nonprofits in Texas is working together to usher minors across state lines for crucial reproductive care

By Olivia Rockeman
Aug 28, 2024

Throughout their early teens, DakotaRei Frausto struggled with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome, as well as anemia and chronic nausea. In 2021, at age 16, Frausto went to a handful of clinics in their home state of Texas to seek out a birth control prescription, hoping it would help address their symptoms. But each of the clinics brushed off their pain or referred them to brochures rather than getting them in front of doctors, and Frausto, feeling defeated, gave up on trying to access birth control.

Soon after, when Frausto was 17, they started to experience more severe PMDD symptoms than usual. A pregnancy test confirmed they were eight weeks pregnant. “When I did test positive, I knew for a fact abortion in Texas wouldn’t be an option for me,” Frausto said, noting that the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. “My immediate next thought was: How am I going to scrape together the resources to travel?”

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a61973788/the-underground-network-fighting-for-teen-abortion-access-in-texas/


USA – Dozens of pregnant women being turned away from ERs despite federal law

More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms have been turned away or negligently treated since 2022

By AMANDA SEITZ, Associated Press
August 12, 2024

Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.
Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dozens-pregnant-women-bleeding-labor-turned-ers-despite-112773677


‘They have no options’: Texas court dims hope of timely abortion care for high-risk patients

Kristen Anaya was told she must be on the cusp of death before doctors would give a life-saving abortion

Mary Tuma
Sat 8 Jun 2024

After four rounds of in vitro fertilization, Kristen Anaya and her husband were elated to discover Anaya was finally pregnant - with a baby girl - last April. The 42-year-old Dallas-area woman called IVF a “long and emotional journey”. Despite the cost and struggle, the process was well worth it for Anaya, who wanted to grow her family.

However, the good news would give way to an unexpectedly grueling and traumatic pregnancy that forced her to suffer for days before receiving care, due to Texas’s severe abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/08/texas-abortion-high-risk-patients


Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications

Center for Reproductive Rights
May 31, 2024

Today the Texas Supreme Court denied claims brought by 20 women denied abortion care despite facing dangerous pregnancy complications and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion bans.

The ruling in the high-profile case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, left physicians without clarity about the circumstances under which they can use their own medical judgement to provide abortion care without fear of prosecution.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/zurawski-v-texas-ruling-texas-supreme-court/


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/