“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.
Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life.
Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct. 14, 2024: For the sake of her 14-year-old son, JJ, she needed to ask her doctor for an abortion to protect her health.
Just a few years earlier, Walker had developed a dangerous case of preeclampsia that had led to the stillbirth of her twins.
But the doctor, her family said, told her what many other medical providers would say in the weeks that followed: There was no emergency; nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, only her health.
Just after Christmas, on his birthday, JJ found his mom draped over her bed, lifeless. An autopsy would later confirm what she had feared: Preeclampsia killed her at 20 weeks pregnant.
Walker’s death is one of multiple cases ProPublica is investigating in which women with underlying health conditions died after they were unable to end their pregnancies.
Walker had known that abortion was illegal in Texas, but she had thought that hospitals could make an exception for patients like her, whose health was at risk.
The reality: In states that ban abortion, patients with chronic conditions and other high-risk pregnancies often have nowhere to turn.
They enter pregnancy sick and are expected to get sicker. Yet lawmakers who wrote the bans have refused to create exceptions for health risks.
Although one doctor documented in her medical record that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death,” she was told over and over again that she didn’t need to worry, her relatives say. More than 90 doctors were involved in Walker’s care, but not one offered her the option to end her pregnancy, according to medical records.
ProPublica had revealed that five women — three in Texas alone — had died after they were unable to access standard reproductive care under the new bans.
More than a dozen OB-GYNs reviewed the case for ProPublica and said that since Walker had persistently high blood pressure, it would have been standard medical practice to advise her of the serious risks of her pregnancy early on, to revisit the conversation as new complications emerged and to offer termination at any point if she wanted it. Some described her condition as a “ticking time bomb.” Had Walker ended her pregnancy, every expert believed, she would not have died.
Under Texas’ abortion law, though, that didn’t matter.
https://www.propublica.org/article/texas...eeclampsia
Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life.
Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct. 14, 2024: For the sake of her 14-year-old son, JJ, she needed to ask her doctor for an abortion to protect her health.
Just a few years earlier, Walker had developed a dangerous case of preeclampsia that had led to the stillbirth of her twins.
But the doctor, her family said, told her what many other medical providers would say in the weeks that followed: There was no emergency; nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, only her health.
Just after Christmas, on his birthday, JJ found his mom draped over her bed, lifeless. An autopsy would later confirm what she had feared: Preeclampsia killed her at 20 weeks pregnant.
Walker’s death is one of multiple cases ProPublica is investigating in which women with underlying health conditions died after they were unable to end their pregnancies.
Walker had known that abortion was illegal in Texas, but she had thought that hospitals could make an exception for patients like her, whose health was at risk.
The reality: In states that ban abortion, patients with chronic conditions and other high-risk pregnancies often have nowhere to turn.
They enter pregnancy sick and are expected to get sicker. Yet lawmakers who wrote the bans have refused to create exceptions for health risks.
Although one doctor documented in her medical record that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death,” she was told over and over again that she didn’t need to worry, her relatives say. More than 90 doctors were involved in Walker’s care, but not one offered her the option to end her pregnancy, according to medical records.
ProPublica had revealed that five women — three in Texas alone — had died after they were unable to access standard reproductive care under the new bans.
More than a dozen OB-GYNs reviewed the case for ProPublica and said that since Walker had persistently high blood pressure, it would have been standard medical practice to advise her of the serious risks of her pregnancy early on, to revisit the conversation as new complications emerged and to offer termination at any point if she wanted it. Some described her condition as a “ticking time bomb.” Had Walker ended her pregnancy, every expert believed, she would not have died.
Under Texas’ abortion law, though, that didn’t matter.
https://www.propublica.org/article/texas...eeclampsia
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"
