“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

USA – Confusing abortion bans hurt patients. But there’s a cost to making them clearer.

What the debate over “clarification” laws reveals about America three years out from Roe.

by Rachel Cohen Booth
Jul 1, 2025

By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida’s new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/abortion/418140/abortion-bans-clarification-texas-tennessee-kentucky-reproductive-rights-roe

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/

‘How sick is sick enough?’ Abortion bans leave providers, patients questioning when care is OK

Saturday, September 2, 2023
By Elise Catrion Gregg | News21

AUSTIN, Texas — Amanda and Josh Zurawski sit in the house they bought last year, the dream home they intended to share with their future daughter.

They’ve told their story too many times now, but they brace themselves to tell it once more — from a room just above the backyard where they will one day plant a tree in memory of the baby who never made it home.
It will be a willow, in honor of the name they chose for their little girl.

Continued: https://nondoc.com/2023/09/02/how-sick-is-sick-enough-abortion-bans-leave-providers-patients-questioning-when-care-is-ok/

Texas sued by women who say state’s abortion bans put their health at risk

By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Tue March 7, 2023

Several women who say Texas’ abortion bans posed significant risks to their health have sued the state this week, opening a new front in the legal battles that have emerged since the Supreme Court overturned national abortion rights protections last year.

Five women allege in the lawsuit that uncertainty around when medical emergency exemptions in Texas’ abortion laws apply exacerbated medical emergencies that put their lives, health and fertility in danger.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/politics/texas-women-abortion-lawsuit-health/index.html

‘Am I a Felon?’ The Fall of Roe v. Wade Has Permanently Changed the Doctor-Patient Relationship

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS
OCTOBER 17, 2022

A few days after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in June, Dr. Mae Winchester got a call late at night. One of her patients had developed sepsis after her water broke at 19 weeks of pregnancy. Sepsis can be fatal, and normally Winchester, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Ohio, would rush her patient into the operating room and provide an abortion. But this time, she felt she had to call her hospital’s lawyers first.

The lawyers agreed that treating this patient with an abortion would be legal under Ohio’s new abortion ban, which contained an exception to prevent the death of the mother. But in other cases, Winchester says care has been delayed, or the lawyers have disagreed with her, and she hasn’t been allowed to provide the care she deems necessary. “Meanwhile, the patient is just sitting in the operating room by herself,” Winchester says, “not knowing what I can do.”

Continued: https://time.com/6222346/abortion-care-after-roe-doctors-lawyers/

Anti-abortion lawyers target those funding the procedure for potential lawsuits under new Texas law

Attorneys who helped design Texas’ novel abortion ban have asked a judge to allow them to depose the leaders of two abortion funds, seeking information about anyone who may have “aided or abetted” in a prohibited procedure.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
FEB. 23, 2022

For nearly six months, as Texas’ novel abortion law has wended its way through the courts, abortion providers and opponents have been locked in a stalemate.

The law, known as Senate Bill 8, empowers private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. With one exception as soon as the law went into effect, abortion providers in Texas have stopped performing these prohibited procedures — so opponents haven’t tried to bring one of these enforcement suits.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/23/texas-abortion-sb8-lawsuits/

‘No one wants to get sued’: Some abortion providers have stopped working in Texas

Nearly half of the doctors at one of the state’s biggest providers stopped working after Texas’ new law went into effect. The law has created a chilling effect for some abortion care services.

Jennifer Gerson
September 15, 2021

On August 31, there were 17 abortion providers serving at the four locations of the Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Texas. On September 1 — the day that the nation’s most restrictive active abortion law went into effect, there were just eight.

Senate Bill 8 not only bans the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy, but allows private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” abortion care past that point. Clinics have told The 19th they are fully complying with the new law. It is why Whole Woman’s Health in Fort Worth raced to perform as many abortions as possible before SB 8 went into effect, battling against the clock. It’s why, in mid-August, Planned Parenthoods across the state stopped taking appointments related to the procedure if it would be performed past six weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2021/09/abortion-providers-texas-stopped-working-under-threat-sued/

Behind the Texas Abortion Law, a Persevering Conservative Lawyer

Jonathan Mitchell has never had a high profile in the anti-abortion movement, but he developed and promoted the legal approach that has flummoxed the courts and enraged abortion rights supporters.

By Michael S. Schmidt
Sept. 12, 2021

Jonathan F. Mitchell grew increasingly dismayed as he read the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2016 striking down major portions of a Texas anti-abortion bill he had helped write.

Not only had the court gutted the legislation, which Mr. Mitchell had quietly worked on a few years earlier as the Texas state government’s top appeals court lawyer, but it also had called out his attempt to structure the law in a way that would prevent judicial action to block it, essentially saying: nice try.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/texas-abortion-lawyer-jonathan-mitchell.html

How the Texas Anti-Abortion Movement Helped Enact a Near-Complete Ban

Texans are almost evenly divided on abortion, but a combination of Republican control, conservative judicial appointments and cultural shifts helped the state’s anti-abortion movement find success.

By Ruth Graham
Published Sept. 5, 2021

RICHARDSON, Texas — A steady stream of women trickled into Prestonwood Pregnancy Center late last week, alone and with partners, with appointments and without. One couple held hands and whispered cheerfully; a young woman scrolled through her phone until her name was called. A wall-mounted screen in a corner cycled through a carousel of inspirational messages. “You are strong.” “Hope is stronger than fear.” “There are options.”

Abortion clinics emptied out last week after a Texas law enacting a near-complete ban on abortion went into effect. But Prestonwood is not one of those clinics. It is instead among the state’s more than 200 “crisis pregnancy centers,” facilities aligned with anti-abortion organizations that offer free medical tests and counseling in hopes of dissuading women from terminating their pregnancies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/05/us/anti-abortion-movement-texas-law.html