Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

  • @newenlightened
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    -12 days ago

    i’ve read all the comments here and don’t see one single person talking about what to do about it. it’s just a big circle jerk of ‘republicans bad’ like we didn’t know that. ‘religion bad’ - yeah, no shit sherlock. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

      • @newenlightened
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        2 days ago

        i’ve been voting for 30 years. hasn’t saved us yet. what’s the next step?

        EDIT: voting is important, but it’s not enough.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 days ago

          Voting is simply putting a word in for a candidate to fill in a subordinate role to your company’s HR department.

          You won’t always get the one you pick, so it’s your responsibility to put forward the best candidate (primaries), vouch for them (voting), and keep them accountable to their KPIs (individual lobbying).

          ETA: Remember, you’re basically looking to hire someone to look after you, your family, your friends and your community for the next n years; it also takes a lot longer to fix something, than it did to break it initially, and fixed things still wear the scars of the past.

          • @newenlightened
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            01 day ago

            didn’t realize i was in the EILI5 sub, but thanks?

        • Cethin
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          12 days ago

          I would argue it has, to an extent. Trump winning is why we’re in this situation. Had he not, the status quo of Roe would have stayed. Vote to restore it.

          • @MrMcGasion
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            32 days ago

            And then once your person wins, shout at them every day about the things that are important to you. Pester and annoy them so much that they are both motivated to do what you want just to get you to leave them alone, and also so they have support they can point to to convince their colleagues to join the cause. We’d be in a very different place if we had demanded getting rid of the Electoral College even 10 years ago, and a vastly different place if we had gotten that changed 25 years ago.

            I know it’s a lot of work to stay loud about political issues all the time, but if you don’t use your voice, someone will take your silence as contentment and nothing will change.

        • @Fedizen
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          02 days ago

          vote harder, make people pay for their votes.

    • Queen HawlSera
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      52 days ago

      The Bible actually gives instructions on how to induce an abortion, and only Catholocism really has a stance against it.

      No, let’s not blame God. The true culprit is men, men who want to make being a woman who isn’t subservient to men punishable by death. And they don’t mind a little friendly fire as long as it keeps the “jezebels” in line.

      THIS is why we don’t vote third party, we go blue, because pink has to pay the price if we don’t.

      • Schadrach
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        014 hours ago

        The Bible actually gives instructions on how to induce an abortion

        It really doesn’t. What it does is describe a religious rite that’s a sort of combined paternity test/abortion if she’s unfaithful. The idea being that the priest does his thing, she drinks the dusty water and if the child isn’t her husband’s she’ll miscarry on the spot. If she doesn’t miscarry, then God has proclaimed it’s his kid and he should have more faith in his wife.

        There’s nothing in the description of it that would tell one how to trigger an abortion without divine involvement.

        The true culprit is men,

        Being pro-life or pro-choice isn’t strongly genedered. It’s not like men as a class oppose abortion and women as a class defend it. I think you’d be shocked at the sheer number of women out there who oppose abortion, and the number of men who don’t. It would be more accurate to say that a swath of religious folks (Catholics and certain flavors of evangelicals) oppose it, and those in their social reach get pulled along with them, along with traditionalist conservatives who are all about controlling sexuality.

        • Queen HawlSera
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          15 hours ago

          Not all men, I mean the specific men who passed this asinine bullshit.

      • @newenlightened
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        32 days ago

        of course. sure. patriarchy, religion, fascism, captialism, all the usual suspects. anybody that doesn’t get it hasn’t been paying attention.

        but what do we DO ABOUT IT?

          • @newenlightened
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            02 days ago

            really? seems a little less than organized and effective.

              • @newenlightened
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                2 days ago

                we been doing that for years. hasn’t changed much. what’s the next step?

                EDIT: protests are 20th century passe’ and only affect change if they become violent (see george floyd), petitions are almost a complete waste of time, your congressman definitely isn’t listening to you, i still believe voting is effective but not enough (and may soon be nerfed into uselessness)

                • @Syrc
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                  21 day ago

                  only affect change if they become violent (see george floyd)

                  Did those even change anything, actually? I just remember some statues being torn down and the police just doing their business as usual. They also need to be aimed at the correct targets for them to be effective.

                  • @newenlightened
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                    11 day ago

                    i don’t think we’d have mandatory body cams or a real push for reform without them. if it had just been peaceful protests, i think america would have shrugged it off like they do every other protest. if protests don’t cause disruption, they usually don’t have any effect. on the other hand, it could be argued that the protests have galvanized another portion of americans into being completely opposed to reform.

                    but of course, that portion of america is the problem and i think they deserve more disruption.