Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.
The hospital knew that they had to protect themselves against the jagoffs who prosecute people who provide women with healthcare.
The law is what created this situation; if the doctors and hospital administration didn’t have to worry about the fascists in the State government, this never would have been an issue.
Or do you just think the doctors didn’t perform the procedure because they didn’t feel like it?
I don’t give a flying fuck why they didn’t help her or what the law says.
They’re monstrous torturers and murderers, regardless of their reasons or lack thereof.
You don’t let someone suffer and die when you have the means to save them, regardless of the consequences, except possibly if those consequences would lead to greater suffering and death (trolley problem). Especially if you call yourself a doctor. (And no, the possibility of going to prison does not count as greater suffering and death, no matter how much of a sociopath you are).
It’s easy to sacrifice someone else to the system. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but if these doctors have to stop practicing medicine then more women will die.
Point the blame at the right people.
Whatever these so called doctors are practicing is the opposite of medicine.
If they were to stop practicing it, at least they wouldn’t have the opportunity to torture and murder more victims, and maybe some real doctors would get their jobs and be able to help.
There’s no excuse for collaborating with a fascist regime. The ones obeying the orders are just as guilty as the ones giving them.
Do you really think OB/GYN are lining up to be doctors in Texas?
Why are you not taking it into your own hands? You’ve not exhausted your own extralegal options, but you’re calling on others to do it.
I’m lucky enough to live in a relatively civilised country (comparatively at least; everything can be improved), not some fascist hellhole like the USA.
Unlike the monsters who tortured and murdered this woman, however, I do use the opportunities and means I have to help people around me, but said people are lucky enough to not be anywhere near the USA.
The law is perfectly clear in allowing this. I’m not going to guess why they didn’t do it, but your point is like arguing a cop watching a mass shooting happen right in front of him would be right to blame the law against excessive use of force if he chose not to kill the mass shooter even though there was an explicit clause saying it would have been permitted.
We all know why they didn’t do it, and your willful ignorance is telling.
Alright, since you want me to say what it was, it sounds like a medical error to me.
Making an argument comparing doctors to cops may not have been the best move.
I’m not comparing them in terms of moral status, I’m comparing them in terms of what they can and can’t do by law.
Hundreds of doctors and their lawyers disagree with you. Of course they could provide medical services, and see if local law enforcement decides to arrest them and lock them up. Or they could withhold medical services, because that’s what their lawyers say is a reasonable interpretation of the law.
In other words, it doesn’t really matter what you or I think. It matters what doctors and their lawyers believe is likely to occur. And we know what that is, because they’re telling us out loud, and they’re showing us through their actions.
Of course you’re entitled to interpret the law however you want to. I think many of us have done that over time, and sometimes we realize that we got it wrong, because we see that lawyers and courts don’t agree with us. Probably this is one of the times that you need to recognize what’s actually happening, and realize that your wishful thinking is just that. I’m sure many people would be happier if reality matched your thoughts, but it doesn’t.
Can you please tell me how this is confusing:
…
You do know that medical errors happens, right? People die from them all the time. This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of it.
It wasn’t a “medical error.”
It was the State of Texas intimidating doctors into not performing life-saving healthcare.
You can try to reframe it all you want, but this it the truth of the situation.
How is any of that legal text “intimidating”?
Yeah, they probably were just taking a long lunch instead of treating a patient.
Are you really asking how a law can be intimidating? That’s like… The reason we have laws, man.
Laws can also be misread, and it’s very likely that this was done somehow. The law explicitly allows abortions under these circumstances. Can you explain yourself what’s confusing about it?
There’s nothing confusing about it.
The law is set up to intimate doctors into not performing abortions. The doctors believe they will be second-guessed by Ken Paxton and his merry band of fascists.
You want to reframe it and blame the doctors instead of the draconian law that intimidates healthcare professionals.
There should never have been a restriction in the first place; women should be free to make their own healthcare decisions free from the constraints of theocratic virtue-signaling control freaks.
It’s confusing because Ken Paxton doesn’t actually care about the law. His goons will show up at your door and accuse you of violating the law whether you did the right thing or not.
That’s worth watching an innocent person die? Besides, how likely is it that “even though she was literally dying of the infection and the hospital knew it, that didn’t constitute a medical emergency” would hold up in court?