Texas Dems target state's abortion ban following report of Houston woman's miscarriage death
HOUSTON, Texas - Just days before the election, both parties are intensifying their efforts to sway voters on priority issues.
In Texas, the state’s abortion restrictions and women’s reproductive rights are a hotly debated topic in this election cycle.
A group of Texas Democrat lawmakers, doctors and women's reproductive rights advocates held a news conference in response to a recently-published article detailing the circumstances that led to the death of two pregnant women who died after doctors reportedly delayed emergency care as a result of Texas Senate Bill 8.
"We're here to talk about what is happening with reproductive healthcare in Texas, why it is happening and what we can do about it," said U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Houston) in a Thursday press conference.
28-year-old Josseli Barnica was pregnant with her second child at 17 weeks when she found herself in the midst of a miscarriage in 2021.
According to a report by ProPublica, Barnica was in a Houston hospital bed for 40 hours, dilated and with her uterus exposed to bacteria before she delivered her deceased son.
Barnica's husband said her medical team told her they could not act until a fetal heartbeat was no longer detected. She died of sepsis three days later.
"It certainly appears this death was preventable, but our state law did not allow that," said Dr. Todd Ivey, a Houston-based OB-GYN and women’s health advocate.
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It happened on September 3, 2021, just two days after Texas passed SB 8, the so-called "fetal heartbeat bill." It bans abortion after six weeks unless certain medical exceptions are met.
"Today, our poorly written vague laws are even more restrictive with threats of life in prison and loss of licensure. The result: women are unnecessarily dying," Ivey said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case that would have determined whether emergency abortions are covered by federal protections for critical health care.
In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in part, "This is a major victory at SCOTUS that will protect Texas medical providers from being forced to violate state law… No Texas doctor should be forced to violate his or her conscience or the law just to do their job. We successfully sued and stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s backdoor attempt to overrule state abortion laws."
The abortion rights issue has been a prominent campaign theme among Democrats nationwide, including the closely watched race for Texas Senate. Thursday's news conference amplified that message.
"This is healthcare being exploited for political gain," claimed Dr. Damla Karsan, a Houston OB-GYN and one of the two physician plaintiffs in Zurawski v. State of Texas. "It's shameful that in a country that has the means and technology that we have that this is happening to women."
The timing of this event is not surprising as Democrats have made abortion restrictions a big campaign issue.
The group is in support of electing Democrats on November 5.
ProPublica says the goal of its reporting is to fill gaps in knowledge about the consequences of abortion bans.