A pregnant Texas teenager died after three separate visits to an emergency room in attempts to get care in another incident that has highlighted the medical impact of the loss of abortion rights in the US.
Nevaeh Crain, 18, had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours in October 2023, each time returning home feeling worse than before. Crain was only diagnosed with strep throat upon her first visit. The hospital did not investigate her sharp abdominal cramps, according to reporting by ProPublica.
Crain is one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban brought in after the US supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion. Josseli Barnica, 28, died after a miscarriage in 2021.
These incidents are seen as evidence of a new reality in which US healthcare professionals in states with new tough abortion restrictions are hesitant or even afraid to give care to pregnant mothers over fear of legal repercussions. Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, regardless of whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.
Medical records indicate Crain tested positive for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition, on her second visit. But doctors still cleared her to leave after apparently confirming that her six-month-old fetus still had a heartbeat.
On her third trip to the hospital, Crain was finally moved to intensive care after an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise”, reported ProPublica.
She died hours later after suffering organ failure. A nurse noted that her lips had turned “blue and dusky”, ProPublica said. The teen would have turned 20 this Friday.
Though Texas retains exceptions for life-threatening conditions, the fear and uncertainty instilled in doctors over which treatments may or may not be considered a crime has had devastating effects on women in need of healthcare.
The result is that in states with abortion bans, patients are often traded between hospitals in order to shirk responsibility and argue about legalities, an act which wastes precious and potentially life-saving time.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University, told ProPublica.
The president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, said Crain’s death underscored the deadly threat posed by abortion bans.
“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence,” Timmaraju said in a statement.
Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent Texas senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against the Democrat Collin Allred.
“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom,” including by supporting Allred and Kamala Harris against Trump in the 5 November election.
By doing so, “we can restore the right to abortion and these bans,” Timmaraju said.
