Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

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_toast_is_gone
      -9•2 months ago

      [Can you point to which law before this happened prohibits abortions in cases of medical emergency?(https://guides.sll.texas.gov/abortion-laws/history-of-abortion-laws#s-lg-box-wrapper-34155545) Let’s go through the list:

      • The 1925 laws were found unconstitutional.
      • Roe v. Wade happened in 1973.
      • In 1992, the “viability” standard was introduced. This baby was clearly unviable.
      • The 1999 law is specific to minors, and the victim here wasn’t a minor.
      • The Woman’s Right to Know Act didn’t prohibit abortions.
      • The 2011 law stated that a sonogram must be performed. Because the baby was suffering from an irreversible medical condition, though, this wouldn’t apply.
      • The only part of the 2013 law that was upheld was the ban after 20 weeks “with some exceptions.” The rest were overtuned in 2016, and this event occurred before the 20th week.
      • The 2017 law was found unconstitutional in 2018, well before this happened.
      • The 2021 law went into effect on September 1, 2021. However, in Sec. 171.205, it states that the prohibition of abortions on a fetus with a detectable heartbeat “do[es] not apply if a physician believes a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance with this subchapter.” This was a medical emergency.
      • @[email protected]
        2•2 months ago

        It’s been the fucking wild west here in Texas due to new laws being pushed out then shot down so quickly, no one can keep track. Even the ones passed are written so badly, they can’t be interpreted correctly. The following is from an article from ProPublica

        Although US abortion bans – which more than a dozen states have enacted in the two years since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade – technically permit the procedure in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that the laws are worded so vaguely that they don’t know when they can legally intervene.

        This has been repeated ad nauseum by doctors on local outlets. It’s meant to be vague and confusing.