In the run-up to the General Election, pro-abortion media outlets were peppering their web pages with stories of would-be mothers in Texas who died during pregnancy.
The stories, told in misleading ways, are meant to enrage readers about Texas’ pro-life laws.
They should anger readers, but not at the laws. Instead, the doctors who failed these women and the leftist goons parading their deaths around as a cause célèbre to advocate for abortion up to the point of birth deserve contempt.
In at least one case, the death of a mother appears to have been entirely preventable and has been called medical malpractice by Diane Ferraro, CEO of Save the Storks, a pro-life organization.
Josseli Barnica was experiencing a miscarriage at 17 weeks when she went to the ER with complications.
Doctors reportedly told her that they needed to wait until there was no heartbeat detected before intervening. Texas law does not mandate this course of action, and since Barnica’s life was in danger due to an increased chance of infection, they could and should have intervened immediately.
If a mother’s life is in danger, in any state, including Texas, doctors must administer life-saving care. The type of care and what becomes of the pregnancy depend on the viability of the infant outside of the womb.
Right now, in Texas, if a mother has complications during her pregnancy that endanger her life before the 20-week mark of pregnancy, intervention that ends the pregnancy is an available option.
Inducing labor, even in a full-term live birth situation, would have taken place well before two days into the delivery. In Barnica’s case, doctors waited two days to intervene in her miscarriage process.
Eventually, doctors did intervene. Then, they sent Barnica home even though she was bleeding intensely and exhibiting symptoms of an infection.
Barinca died of sepsis three days after being discharged from the hospital.
Abortion laws didn’t have a thing to do with her death; poor medical care is clearly to blame.
An autopsy revealed that birth matter was left in Barnica’s womb, something that can happen after a miscarriage, abortion, or birth. If left untreated, in any case, the mother’s life is in danger due to infection.
Barnica wasn’t well monitored after her miscarriage; her complaints about ongoing symptoms suggesting she was suffering from sepsis were ignored, and the doctors who treated her didn’t confirm a complete miscarriage.
Miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies are not some new phenomena that doctors are confused by or ill-equipped to handle. There is no gray area under Texas law that doctors misunderstand. Texas’ abortion laws are meant to stop elective abortion in otherwise healthy women.
Women and babies have been fashioned into a political football, not by pro-life advocates on the right, but by the left, the media, and some in the medical profession.
There’s one other often repeated lie by the media in the hopes of duping Texans into blaming the Texas ban on abortions: an increase in infant deaths. There are more infant deaths in Texas post-Dobbs because more infants are being born.
Maternal deaths have decreased since 2021, when the Texas Heartbeat Bill went into effect, according to NBC News. However, NBC News’ headline claims that mortality rates increased, which is not true.
Anyone who’s been paying attention is intimately familiar with the left’s need to bend reality to fit a narrative, but, in this case, the facts are so out of alignment that they damage the messenger.
The ghoulish nature of limitless abortion is a liability for the left, and so is the science.
In truth, the energy has been moving away from the pro-abortion side since Roe was originally decided, and now they’re left to spin easily debunkable lies.
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