Texas Medical Board Sanctions Three Doctors for Delayed Care That Led to the Deaths of Two Pregnant Women

Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain died during miscarriages in Texas. The state’s medical board ruled that the doctors’ substandard care led to the deaths and ordered them to complete extra training.

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
April 17, 2026

The Texas Medical Board has disciplined three doctors ProPublica previously investigated whose patients died after receiving delayed or inappropriate pregnancy care under the state’s strict abortion ban.

Two of the doctors failed to properly intervene as a pregnant teenager repeatedly sought care for life-threatening complications, the board found. The third did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure to empty a miscarrying patient’s uterus, and she ultimately bled to death.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/tmb-disciplines-doctors-ngumezi-crain-cases

Texas – The girls of San Benito, the center where Trump sends pregnant migrant minors

The Department of Health is transferring them to Texas, where abortion is virtually banned, despite objections from officials at the federal agency responsible for them

Jesús Jank Curbelo
Houston - MAR 13, 2026

Since last July, the Trump administration has been sending all unaccompanied migrant girls who show up pregnant at the U.S. border to a single center located in San Benito, a small border town in South Texas, the state with one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. In recent months, more than a dozen girls have been transferred to this facility. At least half of them became pregnant as a result of rape. Some are 13 years old.

In theory, everyone who arrives at the San Benito center has the right to be informed of their options, including abortion, through a notification called a Garza notice. In practice, however, that right is in jeopardy, according to Sarah Corning, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “We remain concerned that doctors will refuse to perform abortions for fear of prosecution, something we’ve seen happen far too often since the ban went into effect” in the state, she says.

Continued; https://english.elpais.com/usa/2026-03-13/the-girls-of-san-benito-the-center-where-trump-sends-pregnant-migrant-minors.html

‘Lone Star Three’: How Three UT Austin Students Paved the Way for Birth Control Access in 1960s Texas

In the years before Roe v. Wade, three UT Austin students built a quiet network helping women access birth control and abortion care in Texas.

March 5, 2026
by Livia Follet and Ava Slocum

In 1969, Victoria Foe, Judy Smith and Barbara Hines were students at the University of Texas in Austin, when Smith invited Foe and Hines to attend women’s liberation meetings at her house. What began as late-night conversations quickly grew into a campus Birth Control Information Center … and eventually an underground network helping women access abortion at a time when the procedure was illegal in Texas.

Their activism would eventually extend far beyond their university campus, planting the seeds for Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that would legalize abortion in the U.S. Not until 1965 did the Supreme Court recognize a constitutional right for married couples to use birth control; in 1972, it extended that right to unmarried people as well.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/03/05/lone-star-three-documentary-roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-birth-control-victoria-foe-judy-smith-barbara-hines/

After Years of Silence, Texas Medical Board Issues Training for Doctors on How to Legally Provide Abortions

The course includes examples of when abortion is permitted to protect the life of the patient, but many experts say the complications women face in pregnancy are impossible to capture in a brief presentation.

by Cassandra Jaramillo, Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser – ProPublica
February 5, 2026

For the first time since Texas criminalized abortion, the state’s medical regulator is instructing doctors on when they can legally terminate a pregnancy to protect the life of the patient — guidance physicians have long sought as women died and doctors feared imprisonment for intervening.

The new training from the Texas Medical Board comes nearly five years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021, threatening doctors with severe penalties. ProPublica’s reporting has shown that pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effect: Sepsis rates spiked for women suffering a pregnancy loss, as did emergency room visits in which miscarrying patients needed a blood transfusion; at least four women in the state died after they didn’t receive timely reproductive care. More than a hundred OB-GYNs said the state’s abortion ban was to blame.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-medical-board-abortion-training-doctors

“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.

ProPublica has found multiple cases of women with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions. Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old mother, was told by doctors there was no emergency before preeclampsia killed her.

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser, photography by Lexi Parra for ProPublica
November 19, 2025

Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life.

Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct. 14, 2024: For the sake of her 14-year-old son, JJ, she needed to ask her doctor for an abortion to protect her health.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-tierra-walker-preeclampsia

Texas’ abortion crisis deserves concern — even as U.S. turns away

By evading its U.N. human rights review, America ignores what the world sees clearly: Texans suffering under abortion bans.

By Irma L. Garcia
Nov 10, 2025

Last week, at the United Nations in Geneva, the United States was scheduled to undergo a human rights review that all U.N. member states participate in every four and a half years. Instead, the U.S. boycotted its mandatory review, a critically important mechanism for holding countries accountable for their human rights records.

If the review happened as it should, the U.S. reproductive rights crisis would be on full display. For almost 25 years, Jane’s Due Process has helped young Texans access reproductive health care, and since the fall of Roe, we’ve helped more than 300 teens travel out of state for abortion care.

Continued: https://archive.is/WXwhX
(https://www.statesman.com/opinion/columns/your-voice/article/opinion-texas-abortion-crisis-deserves-21145919.php)

10.11.2025

Commentary

Irma L. Garcia

Jane’s Due Process

U.N. Human Rights Council

How Texas Abortion Restrictions Are Driving Doctors Away: ‘By Following the Law, I Was Doing the Wrong Thing Medically’

Texas’ abortion bans have driven hundreds of physicians to leave the state, retire early, or avoid practicing and training there altogether.

Sept 2, 2025
by Bonnie Fuller, Ms. Magazine

Dr. Lou Rubino is just one of many physicians who’ve left Texas as a result of the state’s multiple abortion bans, which prevent doctors from treating pregnant women using not just abortion care, but life-saving emergency care. Rubino told her story to Courier Texas writer Bonnie Fuller.

I remember very clearly the moment I knew I was done. I could no longer practice as a women’s healthcare doctor in Texas. I had a patient, probably 18 or 19 years old. I was doing an ultrasound, and she told me she needed an abortion for her safety. She said, “I’m too young. I don’t feel safe with my partner. I’m scared. I need an abortion.”

When a patient tells me they feel unsafe with a partner, I take that very seriously. Pregnant people are at high risk of harm from abusive partners. It’s a dangerous time. She knew what she needed, and I knew it was wrong for me to say no.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/09/02/how-texas-abortion-restrictions-are-driving-doctors-away-by-following-the-law-i-was-doing-the-wrong-thing-medically/

02.09.2025

Commentary

Bonnie Fuller

criminalizing doctors

Dr. Lou Roubino

Meadow Reproductive Health and Wellness Clinic

Sixteen Hours, Two Flights, and a Pastor on Call: How One Texas Woman Found Abortion Care

Since a near-total ban went into effect, tens of thousands of Texans have left the state to access abortion. Here’s how they do it.

By Bekah Stolhandske McNeel
August 26, 2025

At six-thirty on a hot July morning at Dallas Love Field Airport, Monica, a 28-year-old real estate agent, was standing at the curb looking for a stranger. She scanned the passersby hustling to their Southwest flights until she spotted the person she was there to help: a thirtysomething woman with no carry-on luggage. Rosie, who is using a pseudonym to protect her privacy, was traveling to New Mexico to get an abortion, which, at ten weeks into her pregnancy, was illegal in Texas. She had brought only a handbag and a light jacket to ward off the airport chill. It would be 92 degrees in Albuquerque, where she’d be spending ten hours before flying back to Dallas that evening. She had left her two kids, ages seven and eight, with a family friend. The kids didn’t know she was leaving the state—she’d told them she was catching up on some work at the cosmetology school where she takes night classes. She’d be home late, she had said, but hopefully in time to say good night.

Continued: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-woman-seeking-legal-abortion/

I’m a Texas-Born OB-GYN—But Abortion Bans Are Forcing Me Out

Vi Burgess is a resident physician in Colorado, in training to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. The Texas resident went to medical school in the Lone Star State, but says she’d be terrified to return home to practice medicine.

7/26/2025
by Bonnie Fuller, Ms. Magazine

Ever since Texas became the first state in the country to pass the first abortion ban in 2021, doctors specializing in obstetrics and gynecology have been fleeing the state because they fear getting thrown in jail for up to 99 years if they provide an abortion that the state’s anti abortion attorney general doesn’t deem necessary to save a woman’s life. Texas used to be known as a state with top medical care. Now almost 30 percent of the state’s OB-GYN resident physicians plan to escape it in order to treat patients without a Big Brother state government watching over their shoulders.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/26/texas-ob-gyn-doctor-abortion-ban-law-heartbeat/

26.07.2025

Commentary

abortion provider training

Texas Overhauls Anti-Abortion Program That Spent Tens of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars With Little Oversight

After a ProPublica and CBS News investigation revealed that Texas’ funding pipeline for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers is riddled with waste, nonprofits in the program must now provide a detailed accounting of their expenses.

by Cassandra Jaramillo and Jeremy Kohler
July 10, 2025

Texas health officials are overhauling a program designed to steer people away from abortion following a ProPublica and CBS News investigation that found that the state had funneled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into the effort while providing little oversight of the spending.

The money has been flowing to a network of nonprofit organizations that are part of Thriving Texas Families, a state program that supports parenting and adoption as alternatives to abortion and provides counseling, material assistance and other services. Most of the groups operate as crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, which often resemble medical clinics but are frequently criticized for offering little or no actual health care and misleading women about their options.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-overhauls-anti-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers-funding