Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.
Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.
I see stories like this a lot and can't believe it. My wife was in a similar situation and had to get an emergency dnc, and still came close to dying from sepsis.
The doctors were so on it, we waited in the ER for a while because they were packed but as soon as they took her blood and realized what was going on she was in surgery within the hour.
Our son want even 2 at the time. If we were 30 minutes west she would've died. It's absolutely fucking wild.
So the medical professionals listened to a man, rather than the woman? Typical. Men shouldn't have any say in women's health. It's in the nature of males to seek control over female reproduction. If people can't filter this bias, we need a law to protect people against it.
Pro lifers kill again. They rate the right to live of potential life higher than someone who has been here for 28 years. Someone who left a husband and a child behind. I have to accept I hate pro lifers for the harm they cause. There is no justice in this world as long as these inhuman and barbaric laws are killing people. Real people, not potential people.
Vote Kamala Harris and your sisters, wives and daughters might stop dying for lack of health care when pregnant. Allow Trump to regain power and it will get much, much worse for the women you care about.
A texas woman didn't die, a texas woman was murdered by the state's ignorant, bigoted, christo-fascist policy - abbott, patrick, cruz, gohmert, that cock eyed AG and the rest of them along with every complicit texas republican voter... they all have blood on their cowardly hands.
Dear pro lifers. This is her blood. It's on your hands now. It's not the first blood that got spilled unnecessarily, and it won't be the last. And it's on your hands. YOU made this happen.
Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.
But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.
My country's aptitude for remaining entirely unmoved by preventable tragedies that utterly upend political trajectories in other nations has become one of our most globally defining traits.
This is fucking barbaric. The hospital let her sit for 40 hours with a fetus hanging out of her uterus. Just take a moment to imagine what that alone must have felt like aside from the emotional horror of losing a pregnancy. We wouldn't even imagine treating pets or livestock this way but it's clear that these repugnant forced-birthers don't consider women to be people. One little pill to speed up the labor that her body already decided was needed was all that was required to keep this woman alive. What's the point of even having healthcare when we can't rely on it.
Disgusting that a life was lost over a "person" that would have never existed. This is doing wonders for the birthrate they are so worried about.
I wonder if they just assumed this only effects the poors cause wealthier people would go to less restricted hospitals.
Omfg I get it now...
"All life is sacred" as in all life must feel the fearful embrace of God.
I was gonna put a "/s" at the end, but I'm honestly not too sure anymore... Seems like that's exactly what they want. Like what's the point if not the cruelty?
This situation is so insane that gut punching a pregnant woman could've saved her life. IT IS NOT WHAT I SUGGEST AT ALL. But as medical team didn't kill off the dangerous and doomed unbred for they feared the liability coming from theae weird laws, I guess, that could cross the mind of a father at least once*.
Pussy ass doctors violating their hippocratic oath. The Texas law may have pit them in a "gray" area legally, bit they killed her because they thought it was less likely to get them in trouble.