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


A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms

It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana
Nov. 1, 2024

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-abortion-ban-emtala


‘It’s needless death’: Ugandan activists decry restrictive abortion laws

Abortion is generally illegal in Uganda, and fear of imprisonment leads many to resort to extreme and unsafe practices.

By Sophie Neiman
Published On 28 Sep 2024

Kampala, Uganda – At exactly 3:21pm on August 25, Moses Odongo received a call informing him that his 14-year-old cousin Christine had died attempting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Odongo, who is 40, had just returned home and was sitting down for a drink and a bite to eat. His grief at her untimely death quickly mixed with anger at Uganda’s restrictive abortion laws and conservative culture, which he believes killed her.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/28/its-needless-death-ugandan-activists-decry-restrictive-abortion-laws


Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died

Candi Miller’s family said she didn't visit a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Maternal health experts deemed her death preventable and blamed Georgia’s abortion ban.

by Kavitha Surana
Sept. 18, 2024

Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.

“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.

But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.

Continued; https://www.propublica.org/article/candi-miller-abortion-ban-death-georgia


India – Noida: 38-year-old woman dies during abortion attempt, 4 held

By Ashni Dhaor, Noida
Aug 18, 2024

Greater Noida police have arrested four individuals, including three quacks, in connection with the death of a 38-year-old pregnant woman during an illegal abortion procedure.

The woman, identified as Mubina, was eight months pregnant at the time of the procedure, police officials said on Saturday. According to police, investigators are probing the possibility of the newborn still being alive after procedure, based on preliminary interrogation of suspects . Four additional suspects involved in the case are still at large, they added.

Continued: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/noida-news/noida-38-year-old-woman-dies-during-abortion-attempt-4-held-101723917001930.html


USA – Maternal Deaths Were Highest in States That Restrict Abortion

Sophia Vahanvaty, Bloomberg News
Jul 18, 2024 

Women were more than twice as likely to die in or around childbirth in some US states with severe abortion restrictions compared to those with greater access, researchers said, and disparities could worsen as access to the procedure narrows. 

Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma and other states that enacted abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision were among the worst across 32 measures on women’s health that included access to care and mental health services, according to a report Thursday from the Commonwealth Fund, an independent health research foundation. It focused on data collected in 2021 and 2022.

Continued: https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/maternal-deaths-were-highest-in-states-that-restrict-abortion


India – Telangana: PhD scholar, others held after wife dies during forced abortion

A total of six individuals involved in the case have been arrested

by Tamreen Sultana 
2nd July 2024

Hyderabad: The Suryapet police arrested a PhD scholar along with five others on Monday, July 1, for allegedly forcing his wife to have an unsafe abortion of a baby girl, resulting in her death.

The accused have been identified as PhD scholar Ratnavath, Ranapangu Gopi, Shaik Saidulu, Naveen, Dr. Qasim, and Rani. A total of seven individuals were allegedly involved in the case, and one of them is still absconding, said the Suryapet police.

Continued: https://www.siasat.com/hyderabad-phd-scholar-others-held-after-wife-dies-during-forced-abortion-3054842/


Australia – Two more doctors suspended following investigation into Melbourne woman Harjit Kaur’s death after abortion

By Jessica Longbottom and Rachel Clayton
May 21, 2024

The federal regulator has taken action against two more doctors as part of an investigation following the death of a woman soon after a surgical abortion in Melbourne.

Harjit Kaur, a mother of two, died after attending the Hampton Park Women's Health Clinic in the city's south-east on January 12 to have a surgical termination.

Ms Kaur's family said that soon after the operation concluded, the 30-year-old's heart stopped beating and she could not be revived.

Continued: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-21/doctors-suspended-abortion-death-harjit-kaur/103872770


Australia – Victorian doctor suspended amid investigation into woman’s death after abortion

Women’s health clinic boss claims ‘witch hunt’ after Dr Rudolph Lopes suspended in weeks following 30-year-old’s death

Australian Associated Press
Fri 15 Mar 2024

A doctor working at a women’s health clinic in Melbourne has been suspended as a regulator revealed it was aware of concerns about other practitioners there. The facility’s boss claims it is a “witch hunt”.

It follows the death of 30-year-old mother Harjit Kaur, who died in January at the Hampton Park Women’s Clinic after what was described as a “minor procedure”.

It was later identified as a pregnancy termination.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/15/victorian-doctor-suspended-amid-investigation-into-womans-death-after-abortion


Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?

As many conservatives hail the fall of Roe for saving unborn lives, high-risk pregnancy becomes even more perilous.

By Stephania Taladrid
January 8, 2024

Yeniifer Alvarez arrived in central Texas from San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in 1998. At three, she was just old enough to have a sense of a world left behind: the fire that warmed the house in the evening, the meat hung to dry outside the door, and la bisabuela, her adored great-grandmother, who had died shortly before Yeni and her mom went north. In Luling, Yeni, her parents, aunts, and grandmother settled into a cramped house with a tin roof that was down the street from her great-uncles, the first members of the family to discover the town’s decent jobs, in the oil fields.

Black gold had been gushing there since the nineteen-twenties, and a sulfurous odor hung in the air. To this day, when the smell drifts fifty miles north, people in Austin call it “the Luling effect.” Yeni’s father worked in oil, too, but it wasn’t long before he was deported. Yeni’s mother, Leticia, stayed and got a job in the kitchen of a local Mexican restaurant, where the pay was modest but no one was asking about papers. Every morning, Yeni and her little brother Michael rode to a red brick schoolhouse in a car overstuffed with other kids. At the wheel was a neighbor who, for a dollar a day, took care of children whose parents’ workdays started well before class did. Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/15/abortion-high-risk-pregnancy-yeni-glick