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

Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared.

ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban.

by Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Kavitha Surana
Feb. 20, 2025

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis.

The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found.

The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital.

https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-sepsis-maternal-mortality-analysis

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did

Since Texas banned abortion, no one has studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. Here’s how we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and analyzed the outcomes before and after the ban.

by Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Lizzie Presser
Feb. 20, 2025

A first-of-its-kind analysis by ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% after Texas’ near-total abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. The analysis also identified at least 120 in-hospital deaths of pregnant or postpartum women in 2022 and 2023 — an increase of dozens of deaths from a comparable period before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neither the CDC nor states are investigating deaths or severe maternal complications related to abortion bans. And although the federal government and many states track severe complications in birth events using a federally established methodology, far less is known about complications that arise during a pregnancy loss. There is no federal methodology for doing this, so we consulted with experts to craft one.

https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-maternal-mortality-analysis-methodology

20.02.2025