‘MAGA abortion ban kills women’: Pregnant teen in Texas dies after being denied care

On By Littum

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 Millerwho died due to a ban in Georgia passed in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s reversalRoe v. Wade in 2022, ProPublica turned to Texas and shared the stories of Josseli Barnica and Cranewho died at age 18 last year, after enduring complications from sepsis, the miscarriage of a daughter she planned to name Lillian, and delayed medical treatment.

“On the morning of their baby shower, October 28, 2023, Crain woke up with a headache,” ProPublica reported Friday. Soon she was vomiting with a fever and sought treatment at two hospitals in Texas 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 death’ 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 abortions, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.

Some said the first emergency room missed warning signs of infection that warranted attention. All said the doctor at the other hospital should never have sent Crain home when her signs of sepsis had not improved. And when she returned for the third time, everyone said there was no medical reason to make her wait for two ultrasounds before taking aggressive steps to save her.

“That’s how these restrictions are killing 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’s never just one decision, it’s never just one doctor, it’s never just one nurse.”

Crain and her mother, Candace Fails, “believed that abortion was morally wrong,” according to it ProPublica. “The teenager could only support it in the context of rape or life-threatening illness, she used to tell her mother. They didn’t care if the government banned it, just how their Christian faith guided their own actions.”

Fails told reporters she still believed the doctors were obligated to do everything they could to save Crain, even if it meant losing the pregnancy, but they seemed more concerned about the fetus’s heartbeat. “I know it sounds selfish and God knows I’d rather have them both, 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 stabilization care,” like the Biden-Harris administration argues includes abortions, Associated Pressrevealed in August that over 100 patients nationwide have been “turned away or negligently treated since 2022.”

Republican officials in several states, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have fought the Biden-Harris administration’s interpretation of EMLATA, and last month the US Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling barring emergency abortions that violate Texas law.

ProPublica‘s reporting on Crain’s death comes as early voting is underway for the Nov. 5 election. American voters must 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 campaigned vigorously for reproductive freedom, highlighting that Trump appointed three of the justices behind the 2022. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that ended statewide abortion rights, and he plans to vote against a Florida ballot measure that would ban previability abortion bans in the state, where a six-week limit 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 (DN.Y.) has held recent votes that force Republicans to go on the 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 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 anger at elected Republican officials working to limit reproductive care.

“This latest story from ProPublica about Nevaeh Crain is cleansing,” 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 she’s not, because of Texas’ abortion ban and refusal to provide life-saving care even in a dire emergency.”

Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.)—who has publicly shared her own pre-Roe abortion history –declared that “MAGA abortion ban is killing WOMEN.”

The Center for American Progress’ Alex Wall likewise said: “This is sick. Nevaeh Crain should be alive today. Donald Trump’s MAGA abortion ban is killing women.”

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, who has approved Harris, emphasized that “these Republican monsters in Texas fought the efforts of the Biden-Harris administration to protect women like Nevaeh and Josseli.”

“There’s 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.”