Texas OB-GYNs urge lawmakers to change abortion laws after reports on pregnant women's deaths

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A group of 111 OB-GYNs in Texas released a letter to elected state leaders Sunday urging them to change abortion laws they say have prevented them from providing lifesaving care to pregnant women.

The doctors pointed to recent reporting by ProPublica on two Texas pregnant women who died after medical staff delayed emergency care.

Josseli Barnica, 28, died of an infection in 2021 three days after she began to miscarry. More than a dozen medical experts said Barnica’s death was preventable. However, the state’s abortion laws kept doctors from intervening until they couldn’t detect a fetal heartbeat, which didn’t happen until about 40 hours after the miscarriage started.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, died last year after developing a dangerous complication of sepsis that doctors refused to treat while her six-month-old fetus still had a heartbeat. Two emergency rooms didn’t treat her and a third delayed care, moving Crain to the intensive care unit only after she was experiencing organ failure. Medical experts said if the hospital staff had treated her early, they either could have helped Crain with an early delivery or saved her life by ending the pregnancy if the infection had gone too far.

“Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain should be alive today,” the doctors wrote in their letter. “As OB-GYNs in Texas, we know firsthand how much these laws restrict our ability to provide our patients with quality, evidence-based care.”

In 2021, Texas lawmakers passed a law prohibiting doctors from performing an abortion after six weeks. The law allows members of the public to sue doctors or anyone who helps perform an abortion for $10,000.

After the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas banned almost all abortions — including in cases of rape and incest. The law does create an exception for a doctor to perform an abortion when they believe it is necessary to save the life of the pregnant patient. Doctors who violate the state’s abortion law risk losing their medical license and potentially spending life in prison.

Doctors have said that confusion about what constitutes a life-threatening condition has changed the way they treat pregnant patients with complications. The Texas Medical Board has offered guidance on how to interpret the law’s medical exception, and the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that doctors don’t need to wait until there’s an imminent risk to the patient to intervene. But some physicians say the guidance is vague and that hospitals are navigating each situation on a case-by-case basis.

ProPublica’s reporting about Crain and Barnica comes as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas face off in a heated bid for one of Texas' two seats in the U.S. Senate. Their divergent views on abortion have been a central issue in the race, and both candidates have weighed in on Crain and Barnica’s deaths.

“Texas doctors can’t do their jobs because of Ted Cruz’s cruel abortion ban,” Allred wrote on X, linking to the story about Crain. “Cruz even lobbied SCOTUS to allow states to ban life-saving emergency abortions.”

In 2021, Cruz sponsored a 20-week federal abortion ban. He also co-introduced a bill that would allow states to exclude medical providers that perform abortions from receiving Medicaid funding. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Cruz celebrated the decision as a “massive victory.”

Cruz has previously said he thought Texas’ exception to save the life of the pregnant mother was working. This week he reiterated that stance. He called Crain and Barnica’s deaths “heartbreaking” in an interview with The Houston Chronicle and said procedures necessary to save the life of the pregnant mother are legal in Texas.

Dozens of women have come forward saying that, after the state’s abortion ban went into effect, they were unable to get the health care they needed for their medically complex pregnancies.

Last year, state lawmakers passed a law allowing abortions for people with ectopic pregnancies, a nonviable type of pregnancy in which the embryo implants outside the uterus, as well as when a patient’s water breaks before the fetus is viable.

The doctors who signed the letter said they want to see a change in state law.

“Texas needs a change. A change in laws. A change in how we legislate medical decisions that should be between a patient, their family, and their doctor.”