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'MAGA Abortion Bans Kill Women': Pregnant Texas Teen Dead After Care Denied
"Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this," said one reproductive rights leader. "We must stop him."
Nov 01, 2024
Nevaeh Crain would have turned 20 on Friday. Instead, she is yet another American woman killed by a Republican abortion ban.
After reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who died because of a Georgia ban enacted in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court reversingRoe v. Wade in 2022, ProPublica turned to Texas, sharing the stories of Josseli Barnica and Crain, who died at 18 years old last year, having endured a sepsis complication, the miscarriage of a daughter she planned to name Lillian, and delayed medical care.
"On the morning of their baby shower, October 28, 2023, Crain woke with a headache," ProPublica reported Friday. Soon vomiting with a fever, she sought care at two Texas hospitals a total of three times over 20 hours. As the outlet detailed: "On her third trip, a doctor insisted on two ultrasounds to 'confirm fetal demise' before moving her to intensive care. Hours later, Crain died."
As journalists Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana explained:
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain's medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Some said the first ER missed warning signs of infection that deserved attention. All said that the doctor at the second hospital should never have sent Crain home when her signs of sepsis hadn't improved. And when she returned for the third time, all said there was no medical reason to make her wait for two ultrasounds before taking aggressive action to save her.
"This is how these restrictions kill women," said Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director at the Department of Health and Human Services and an emergency room physician in New York. "It is never just one decision, it's never just one doctor, it's never just one nurse."
Crain and her mother, Candace Fails, "believed abortion was morally wrong," according to ProPublica. "The teen could only support it in the context of rape or life-threatening illness, she used to tell her mother. They didn't care whether the government banned it, just how their Christian faith guided their own actions."
Fails told the reporters that she still thought the doctors were obligated to do everything they could to save Crain, even if it meant losing the pregnancy, but they seemed more concerned with the fetal heartbeat. "I know it sounds selfish, and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose," she said, "I would have chosen my daughter."
Although a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), requires emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide patients with "necessary stabilizing treatment," which the Biden-Harris administration argues includes abortions, The Associated Pressrevealed in August that over 100 patients nationwide have been "turned away or negligently treated since 2022."
Republican officials in multiple states, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have fought against the Biden-Harris administration's interpretation of EMLATA, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas law.
ProPublica's reporting on Crain's death comes as early voting is underway for the November 5 elections. American voters are set to choose the next president—former Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris—and which party controls each chamber of Congress.
Democrats have heavily campaigned on reproductive freedom, highlighting that Trump appointed three of the justices behind the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that ended nationwide abortion rights and he plans to vote against a Florida ballot measure that would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in the state, where a six-week restriction is now in effect. In September, Harris, a former U.S. senator, endorsed eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe.
The GOP controls the U.S. House of Representatives but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has held recent votes forcing Republicans to go on record against federal bills that would protect abortion care, birth control, and fertility treatments. Texas Congressman Colin Allred, the Democrat challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), took note of Crain's story on Friday.
"This is tragic. My heart goes out to Nevaeh's family," Allred said on social media. "Texas doctors can't do their jobs because of Ted Cruz's cruel abortion ban. Cruz even lobbied SCOTUS to allow states to ban life-saving emergency abortions. We can't afford six more years of Ted Cruz."
Others also responded to the new reporting by directing ire at anti-choice Republican officials working to restrict reproductive care.
"This latest story from ProPublica about Nevaeh Crain is gutting," said Cecile Richards, co-founder of Abortion in America and former president of Planned Parenthood. "She was a teenager who should be alive today, and isn't, because of Texas' abortion bans and refusal to provide lifesaving care even in a dire emergency."
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)—who has publicly shared her own pre-Roe abortion story—declared that "MAGA abortion bans KILL WOMEN."
Center for American Progress' Alex Wall similarly said: "This is sickening. Nevaeh Crain should be alive today. Donald Trump's MAGA abortion bans are killing women."
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, which has endorsed Harris, stressed that "these Republican monsters in Texas fought the Biden-Harris administration efforts to protect women like Nevaeh and Josseli."
"There is a special place in hell for Ken Paxton," she continued, calling out the Texas attorney general. "Make no mistake Donald Trump's abortion ban did this. We must stop him."
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'Trump Did This': 100+ Pregnant Women Neglected, Denied ER Care Since 2022
"I ended up losing half of my fertility and if I was made to wait any longer, it's very likely I would have died," said one Texas patient.
Aug 12, 2024
Monday reporting from The Associated Press and newly filed federal complaints highlight how abortion restrictions enacted in U.S. states since the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade endanger the health and lives of pregnant people nationwide.
Building on a report published earlier this year ahead of oral arguments in a relevant U.S. Supreme Court case, the AP's Amanda Seitz revealed that "more than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022," according to an analysis of federal hospital investigations.
Legal experts and medical providers argue that "nursing and doctor shortages that have plagued hospitals since the onset of Covid-19, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock, and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women," Seitz reported. Even when laws make exceptions intended for cases of rape, incest, and emergencies, some doctors and facilities decline to provide care out of fear of state restrictions.
As the AP detailed:
A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby’s death.
Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas, and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.
Seitz also shared stories from Florida, Idaho, Texas, and Washington. Two women from Texas—Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz and Kyleigh Thurman—had the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) file complaints on their behalf with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week. They both had ectopic pregnancies and lost a fallopian tube.
"Despite the fact that my life was clearly in danger, the hospital told me that they could not help me. I ended up losing half of my fertility and if I was made to wait any longer, it's very likely I would have died," Norris-De La Cruz said Monday in a CRR statement.
"The doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare," she continued. "So, I'm filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us. Texas state officials can't keep ignoring us. We can't let them."
Thurman said that "I never imagined I would find myself in the crosshairs of my home state's extreme abortion bans. For weeks, I was in and out of emergency rooms trying to get the abortion that I needed to save my future fertility and life. This should have been an open-and-shut case. Yet, I was left completely in the dark without any information or options for the care I deserved."
"Pregnancy is not straightforward, and I now have to live with the consequences of these extreme laws every day," she added. "None of this should have happened to me, and I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."
Beth Brinkmann, CRR's senior director of U.S. litigation, asked: "How many more people will nearly die before we see change? These women are proof that exceptions do not make abortion bans less dangerous, even when they are exceedingly clear."
"Texas law clearly allows for abortions to treat ectopic pregnancies, and federal law requires it," Brinkmann explained. "Yet, Kelsie and Kyleigh were denied absolutely urgent care. As long as these bans are in place, doctors will be terrified to provide abortions of any kind."
"It's impossible to have the best interest of your patient in mind when you're staring down a life sentence," she asserted. "Texas officials have put doctors in an impossible situation. It is clear that these exceptions are a farce, and that these laws are putting countless lives in jeopardy."
The relevant Supreme Court case focuses on Idaho's strict abortion ban and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law requiring emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide patients with "necessary stabilizing treatment," which the Biden administration argues includes abortion care.
Two years after reversing Roe with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, the high court in June dismissed the Idaho case without ruling on its merits and sent it back to the lower courts. The decision temporarily restored emergency abortions in Idaho but, as CRR said at the time, "still leaves millions of people in states with abortion bans vulnerable."
In response to the "horrifying" AP reporting and CRR complaints, reproductive rights advocates, including some doctors, called out the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority—led by Chief Justice John Roberts—and politicians who installed them and are trying to outlaw abortion care.
"In addition to these individual incidents is the horrifying recognition that they are not one-off consequences of some short-term disaster. They represent a reality created by the Supreme Court that will take a generation at minimum to undo. This is now our status quo," said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the ACLU, on her personal social media.
Denver Post opinion editor Megan Schrader declared that "pregnant women are suffering because of the twisted and corrupted jurisprudence of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas."
Dr. Michelle Au, an anesthesiologist and Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives for the 50th District, stressed that "standards of care haven't changed. EMTALA hasn't changed. What has changed are state laws inhibiting doctors from caring for patients."
Au took aim at former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the November election, declaring that "Trump did this."
American Bridge 21st Century, a super political action committee and research group that supports Democrats, similarly said Monday that "Trump overturned Roe and American women are paying the price."
Although Trump has recently tried to downplay the significance of abortion rights in this cycle and distance himself from some restrictions, recognizing them as politically risky, he has previously backed anti-abortion laws and bragged about appointing half of the justices who overturned Roe. Rights advocates fear what his return to office would mean for reproductive freedom.
Trump and his vice presidential candidate, anti-choice U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), are set to face Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on November 5.
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SCOTUS Ruling on Emergency Abortion Care Called 'Dangerous Preview for What Could Come'
"If Trump is elected again, he will appoint even more justices who could uphold future abortion bans and endanger our fundamental freedoms for decades."
Jun 27, 2024
Reproductive rights advocates across the United States on Thursday were "hardly celebrating" the Supreme Court's one-sentence decision in a case regarding whether emergency departments can provide abortion care to people who have urgent pregnancy complications, and the court left open the possibility that such care could ultimately be banned.
In Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, Idaho officials asked the court to intervene in an earlier decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which temporarily blocked the state's near-total abortion ban after the Biden administration argued it violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
EMTALA requires hospital emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide "necessary stabilizing treatment" to all patients, and the Biden administration argued abortion care is included in that requirement and that federal law should override Idaho's abortion ban.
But a day after a draft decision was mistakenly posted on the Supreme Court's website, the release of the ruling confirmed that the court had dismissed the case without ruling on its merits and was sending it back to the lower courts.
The decision temporarily restores Idaho medical providers' ability to provide emergency abortions, but as the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) said, "it still leaves millions of people in states with abortion bans vulnerable."
"Hospitals in the 14 states that completely ban abortion, as well as many others with bans and restrictions, have shown they are afraid to provide emergency abortions due to the risk of severe criminal penalties under their states' vague and confusing abortion bans," said the organization. "For patients needing abortion care in those states, they will continue to largely rely on their state's medical exceptions, which often do not work in practice."
Nancy Northrup, CRR's president and CEO, explained that the court had "kicked the can down the road on whether states with abortion bans can override the federal law requirement that hospitals must provide abortion care to patients in the throes of life-threatening pregnancy complications."
"The court's refusal to clearly affirm the rights of all pregnant people to emergency abortion care, and put an unequivocal end to extremist attacks by anti-abortion politicians on this essential healthcare, is a dangerous preview for what could come."
"The Supreme Court created this healthcare crisis by overturning Roe v. Wade and should have decided the issue," said Northrup. "Women with dire pregnancy complications and the hospital staff who care for them need clarity right now."
Two of the court's liberal members, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, agreed with Northrup and other advocates in a dissenting opinion that the panel should have ruled on the merits of the case.
Kagan wrote that EMTALA "unambiguously requires" hospitals to provide emergency treatment including abortion care, while Jackson said Idaho's ban on nearly all abortions created a "monthslong catastrophe" when it was in effect.
"Idaho physicians were forced to step back and watch as their patients suffered, or arrange for their patients to be airlifted out," Jackson wrote of the state's law, which bans abortions except in cases of rape, incest, certain nonviable pregnancies, and those in which a pregnant patient's life is at risk. "There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now."
"While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires," Jackson continued.
Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito also objected to the court's refusal to rule on the case's merits, but said Idaho's ban should apply to abortion care, arguing that EMTALA requires hospitals "to treat, not abort, an 'unborn child.'"
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Alito's dissent, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, "will embolden those who are pursuing a strategy to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses that will override the rights of the pregnant person and ban not only abortion, but other forms of reproductive healthcare like fertility treatment and birth control as well."
With the official release of the ruling, said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, "it is now clear that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to hold once and for all that every pregnant person in this country is entitled to the emergency care they need to protect their health and lives, and it failed to do so."
"The court's refusal to clearly affirm the rights of all pregnant people to emergency abortion care, and put an unequivocal end to extremist attacks by anti-abortion politicians on this essential healthcare, is a dangerous preview for what could come," said Kolbi-Molinas. "This fight is far from over–anti-abortion politicians are trying to ban abortion in all 50 states, including in emergencies. These extremist politicians went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to put doctors in jail for providing life- and health-saving emergency abortion care, and they will do it again, if we let them."
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court's right-wing majority in June 2022, a number of cases from states with abortion bans and restrictions have garnered national attention, with women speaking out about being denied abortion care when they were experiencing severe, sometimes life-threatening, complications or had learned their fetuses had fatal abnormalities.
Despite those cases, Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg said Thursday's ruling leaves an "open question" on whether or not emergency rooms can "just let women die instead of treating them."
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said the ruling should "serve as a reminder of what's at stake this November."
"While the Biden administration is fighting tooth and nail to ensure people can get the emergency abortion care they need, anti-abortion extremists will continue to do whatever they can to stop them," said Timmaraju. "We must secure reproductive freedom majorities in Congress and send President Biden back to the White House to restore the federal right to abortion and expand access for all."
Judicial reform group Stand Up America pointed to the Supreme Court Voter campaign it launched Monday, aiming to mobilize voters "on the impact the next president will have on the future of the U.S. Supreme Court."
"The Roberts court's decision to take up Idaho v. United States endangered the lives of pregnant Americans and did irreparable harm," said Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey. "By staying the lower court's decision, the Supreme Court allowed Idaho's extreme abortion ban to take effect while it considered the case. In the meantime, for months, the lives of women in Idaho were callously put at risk, with multiple patients having to be medevacked out of the state to receive care.
"By overturning Roe, the MAGA majority on the court opened the door to extreme abortion bans like the one in Idaho," she added. "If Trump is elected again, he will appoint even more justices who could uphold future abortion bans and endanger our fundamental freedoms for decades."
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