She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.

by Kavitha Surana
May 26, 2026

On the morning of Sept. 16, 2024, Emily Waldorf’s preschooler found her curled on the bathroom floor. Waldorf had felt a strange pressure during a shower, like a balloon bulging into her vagina, and was now bleeding. “I can be your pillow, mommy,” her daughter said, nuzzling into her neck.

Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant. She and her husband, Justin, dropped their daughter off at her grandparents’ and rushed to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Waldorf worked as an acute care physical therapist.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/arkansas-abortion-ban-miscarriage-care


A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.

Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.

by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana
Nov. 25, 2024

Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/porsha-ngumezi-miscarriage-death-texas-abortion-ban