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
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    -42 months ago

    Your eagerness to condemn others for not wanting millions of innocent people to die without being able to articulate why killing everyone else is wrong is really quite telling. As is your use of political labels used by dictators to justify killing innocent people​.

    • @Zombiepirate
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      22 months ago

      Go away, you’re boring and predictable.

      • @the_toast_is_gone
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        2 months ago

        If you think human life is so worthless, or you’re so intent on debating questions as relevant as “should gnomes be allowed to access the adamantium deposits if all they’ll do is make jewelry with it,” then alright. Have a good day.

        • @Zombiepirate
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          22 months ago

          Go away, you’re boring and predictable.