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

In ‘Scarlet Girls,’ a Debut Feature Director Tackles the Fact That Abortion Is Still “Completely Criminalized” in the Dominican Republic

Paula Cury discusses taking “the hard route” for her first feature film, premiering at Copenhagen doc fest CPH:DOX, finding “very brave” women to speak up, and the global backlash against women’s rights.

By Georg Szalai
March 11, 2026

Five women reflect on their experiences with forced motherhood and clandestine abortions in the Dominican Republic in Paula Cury’s debut feature, Scarlet Girls. After all, the Dominican Republic (DR) is still one of the few countries where abortion is criminalized without exception.

The film, exploring what it means to be a woman in the DR and the quiet violence of stigma, among other things, world premieres at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX on Thursday, March 12. It is featured in the Human:Rights competition section of the Danish festival’s 23rd edition, which runs March 11-22, and will then screen at SXSW.

Continued: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/scarlet-girls-film-interview-abortion-dominican-republic-1236524313/

11.03.2026

Film, Art, Books

Adrift documentary

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX

Fears for women’s rights in Chile as anti-abortion president set to take office

José Antonio Kast, who voted against legalising divorce in 2004, has pushed for return to total abortion ban

Charis McGowan in Santiago
Tue 10 Mar 2026

Women’s rights activists in Chile are bracing as the most conservative president since the Pinochet dictatorship prepares to take office on Wednesday.

José Antonio Kast, a 60-year-old ultra Catholic whose father was a member of the Nazi party, has consistently blocked progressive bids for women’s rights and equality across his three-decade career in politics.

As a congressman, Kast voted against divorce when Chile became one of the last countries of the world to legalise it in 2004 and vehemently opposed the legalisation of abortion under limited exceptions when it was passed in 2017. He has since pushed to revert to a total ban on abortion and require parental consent for the morning-after pill.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/10/fears-womens-rights-chile-anti-abortion-president-jose-antonio-kast

Total abortion ban in Dominican Republic has cost women’s lives, social media campaign warns

Artists and activists are telling the stories of women who've died from high-risk pregnancies in a push to add exceptions to the ban.

Aug. 30, 2025
By Carmen Sesin

With a birthday cake in hand, well-known Dominican Republic comedian Carlos Sánchez recounted in an Instagram post how 25-year-old Winifer Núñez Beato died in 2021 after doctors on the island refused to end her high-risk pregnancy because of the country’s total abortion ban.

Núñez Beato left behind a husband and a young daughter. In the video, Sánchez said the cake is not for his birthday, but rather to mark another year where he’s asking for women not to die because of a law that stops doctors from saving their lives.

Sánchez told NBC News he felt compelled to use his platform to raise awareness because “it’s a barbarity that in this day and age a mother has to put her life at risk over a risky pregnancy that could be ended but the law prohibits doctors to do so.”

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/total-abortion-ban-dominican-republic-cost-womens-lives-social-media-c-rcna228070

A Deafening Silence: The Inter-American Court’s Failure to Address Abortion in in Beatriz v El Salvador

24.07.25
Alicia Ely Yamin, Sabrina Ochoa

As clashes over sexual and reproductive rights are presently used in culture wars and lawfare, the recent decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Beatriz v. El Salvador is a missed opportunity to consolidate the Court’s jurisprudence on sexual and reproductive health and rights and defend the legitimacy of international human rights law. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, El Salvador, who, after experiencing a high-risk pregnancy due to Lupus, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus among fifteen doctors of the lack of fetal viability and the immediate harm to Beatriz, she was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months as various institutional and judicial entities deliberated on whether to allow her doctors to perform a therapeutic abortion.

Continued: https://opiniojuris.org/2025/07/24/a-deafening-silence-the-inter-american-courts-failure-to-address-abortion-in-in-beatriz-v-el-salvador/

6 Stories Show the Human Toll of Poland’s Strict Abortion Laws

By Anna Pamula | Photographs by Kasia Strek for TIME
OCTOBER 13, 2023

Krzysztof Sowinski has cried every day since his wife Marta, who was five months pregnant, died of sepsis in 2022; he believes doctors put Marta’s life in danger by not giving them the option to terminate the pregnancy while the fetus’ heart was still beating. Janusz Kucharski also lost his partner Justyna to sepsis in the fifth month of a pregnancy. She left behind two boys.

It is likely, reproductive-rights advocates say, that these women would be alive if not for Poland's increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Abortion has been illegal in the country since 1993, but a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, which went into effect the next year, removed one of the exceptions to the law—fetal abnormalities—and imposed a near-total ban on abortion. Now women can terminate a pregnancy only if the women’s life or health is at risk (including mental health risks with a psychiatric diagnosis) or if there is reasonable suspicion that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Continued: https://time.com/6320172/poland-abortion-laws-maternal-health-care/

13.10.2023

Commentary

abortion stories

Barbara Zientek

Bartlomiej Chmielowiec

Debski Clinic

Dorota Lalik

Dr. Gizela Jagielska

Dr. Katarzyna Szamotulska

Dr. Krzysztof Preis

European Court of Human Rights

FEDERA

Foundation for Women and Family Planning

Law and Justice party

Mother and Child Institute

Poland Constitutional Tribunal

Poland’s Office for Patients' Rights

total abortion ban

U.N. Committee Against Torture

Pregnant with no OB-GYNs around: In Idaho, maternity care became a casualty of its abortion ban

After an Idaho hospital closed its obstetrics department, pregnant women in the county have been left without nearby care. Their OB-GYNs fled the state.

Sept. 30, 2023
By Julianne McShane

If you’re pregnant in Bonner County, Idaho, you’ll likely spend a lot of time on Route 95. Bonner General Health, a 25-bed hospital, discontinued obstetrics, labor and delivery services this year. So for residents, Route 95 is the way to the closest in-state hospital with obstetrics care, which is at least an hour’s drive south — or longer in the snowy winter.

The hospital, which staffed the county’s only OB-GYNs, cited the state’s “legal and political climate” as one of the reasons it shuttered the department. Abortion has been banned in Idaho, with few exceptions, since August 2022.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/pregnant-women-struggle-find-care-idaho-abortion-ban-rcna117872

Polish activist says she won’t stop swearing after guilty ruling

PAUL WALDIEEUROPE
Sept 23, 2023

Julia Landowska never thought of herself as a crusader for free speech until she got a $15 fine for swearing in public during a protest against Poland’s strict abortion laws.

Ms. Landowska is a 23-year-old medical student in Gdansk and rarely paid much attention to politics until October, 2020, when Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that banned access to abortion in all circumstances except cases of sexual assault or incest or if the woman’s life or health were at risk. The decision prompted widespread demonstrations against the populist Law and Justice party, or PiS, which has been accused of politicizing the tribunal.

Continued: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-polish-anti-abortion-activist-says-she-wont-stop-swearing-after-guilty/

Dominican Republic: Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child – 94th Session

Human Rights Watch
August 31, 2023

The National Confederation of Rural Women (Confederación Nacional de Mujeres del Campo or CONAMUCA), Network of United Youth Voices (Red Juvenil Voces Unidas), the Coalition for Women’s Life and Dignity (Coalición por la Vida y la Dignidad de las mujeres), and Human Rights Watch write in advance of the 94th session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (the “Committee”) and its review of the Dominican Republic. This submission addresses articles 3, 6, 24, 28, and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and covers access to abortion and specific aspects of the right to education.

The total abortion ban in the Dominican Republic, in effect since 1884, threatens the health and lives of girls, women, and pregnant people, and is incompatible with the country’s international human rights obligations.

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/31/dominican-republic-submission-un-committee-rights-child

31.08.2023

adolescent pregnancy

Human Rights Watch

Luis Abinader

maternal mortality ratio

Pan-American Health OrganizationPan-American Health Organization

total abortion ban

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

El Salvador – When Abortion Bans Are Too Popular to Overturn

A court may soon rule against El Salvador’s anti-abortion law. But will that make a difference?

APRIL 24, 2023
By Anna-Catherine Brigida

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—Alba Lorena Santos had just returned home from running errands when her headache began. She saw blood running down her legs. She was five months pregnant.

Santos told her daughter to call their neighbor, a relative by marriage, for help. She fainted shortly after. When she woke up, she remembers the neighbor telling her the baby—a boy—had died.

The next day the neighbor returned and said the police were there to ask some questions. Still sick and feverish, Santos said she was put into a police car and asked: “Why did you kill him? Not even dogs do that.”

Continued: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/24/abortion-bans-popular-el-salvador-latin-america/