Texas Forced This Woman to Give Birth to a Stillborn Son. She’s Suing
But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was the longest 5 minutes of my life,” Hogan recalled on Monday.
By the time she arrived at the hospital, she had lost too much amniotic fluid for her son to survive — but hospital staff didn’t tell her that. “They didn’t tell me much about my son’s chances of survival. But the one thing they did make clear repeatedly was that I should not leave,” a tearful Hogan said Monday. “I was told that if I tried to discharge myself, or seek care elsewhere, that I could be arrested for trying to kill my child. So of course, I stayed.”
Hogan recounted a harrowing five days inside the hospital, where she says religious counselors repeatedly came to visit her, even though she had declined pastoral care. She recalled being terrified of even going to the bathroom — afraid she would go into premature labor, and be arrested.
“On the fifth day in the hospital, while using the bathroom, my son started to enter the birth canal,” Hogan said. “I was rushed to labor and delivery where I gave birth to him stillborn.”
The next morning she was discharged, and told she could return to work the next day, “as if nothing had happened,” Hogan said.
Hogan is one of eight new plaintiffs who joined a lawsuit against the state of Texas on Monday, seeking clarification about what qualifies as a medical emergency under Texas’ medieval abortion bans. Also on Monday, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the initial suit in March, asked a district court in Travis County for a temporary injunction blocking Texas’ abortion bans in cases of pregnancy complications as the case continues.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/po...234739485/
But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was the longest 5 minutes of my life,” Hogan recalled on Monday.
By the time she arrived at the hospital, she had lost too much amniotic fluid for her son to survive — but hospital staff didn’t tell her that. “They didn’t tell me much about my son’s chances of survival. But the one thing they did make clear repeatedly was that I should not leave,” a tearful Hogan said Monday. “I was told that if I tried to discharge myself, or seek care elsewhere, that I could be arrested for trying to kill my child. So of course, I stayed.”
Hogan recounted a harrowing five days inside the hospital, where she says religious counselors repeatedly came to visit her, even though she had declined pastoral care. She recalled being terrified of even going to the bathroom — afraid she would go into premature labor, and be arrested.
“On the fifth day in the hospital, while using the bathroom, my son started to enter the birth canal,” Hogan said. “I was rushed to labor and delivery where I gave birth to him stillborn.”
The next morning she was discharged, and told she could return to work the next day, “as if nothing had happened,” Hogan said.
Hogan is one of eight new plaintiffs who joined a lawsuit against the state of Texas on Monday, seeking clarification about what qualifies as a medical emergency under Texas’ medieval abortion bans. Also on Monday, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the initial suit in March, asked a district court in Travis County for a temporary injunction blocking Texas’ abortion bans in cases of pregnancy complications as the case continues.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/po...234739485/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
