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Posted
19 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

 

California has a great distinction on this, they say if the child is mutilated by a doctor, it's okay, but if the child is killed with the mother who was just on her way to abort it is still double homicide.  It doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter how the mother truly feels, it's how the state sees it.

 

I get your confusion. Nuance is hard. FYI, I imagine the law is the same in Kansas, where the citizens voted in favor of legal abortion, which is legal until the fetus is viable. Same for California.

Further, About six-in-ten US citizens (63%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 
 

But, the individual ought make a decision for herself. A state with the power to ban abortion is a state with the power to force abortion. 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

I get your confusion. Nuance is hard. FYI, I imagine the law is the same in Kansas, where the citizens voted in favor of legal abortion, which is legal until the fetus is viable. Same for California.

Further, About six-in-ten US citizens (63%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 
 

But, the individual ought make a decision for herself. A state with the power to ban abortion is a state with the power to force abortion. 

I get this, I would rather hope that women in their hearts to choose life. 

Posted
Well, if this country supported pregnancy, mothers, and raising children, with a fervor, and generous funding, I suspect significantly more women would choose to bring a baby into the world. But, we don’t. Healthcare. Child care. Lower wages. The cost of raising a kid is mountainous, and we don’t want to be burdened by increased taxation to create a more hospitable world.

Bingo. The GQP and crew is strongly pro-forced birth. They are not in any way pro-life.
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Posted
Well, if this country supported pregnancy, mothers, and raising children, with a fervor, and generous funding, I suspect significantly more women would choose to bring a baby into the world. But, we don’t. Healthcare. Child care. Lower wages. The cost of raising a kid is mountainous, and we don’t want to be burdened by increased taxation to create a more hospitable world.

We can’t even slightly improve the general citizenry’s health outcomes! That’s socialism! And against gods will!

The last few pages here are a perfect example of how the right dangles a shiny emotional object in front of people so they can rob them and give their money to their 1%er buddies.
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Posted
On 11/30/2024 at 5:07 PM, workswithseed said:

I get this, I would rather hope that women in their hearts to choose life. 

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/27/texas-abortion-death-porsha-ngumezi/#:~:text=Porsha's is the fifth case,those deaths were in Texas.

Plenty of Texas women "choose life" and want to have babies.  The problem is you religious fanatics trying to use your imaginary friend to legislate women's choices on what they can and cannot do w/ their bodies.

Go fuck yourself with your disingenuous bullshit. 

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Posted
On 1/3/2025 at 3:40 PM, Willfully Horn said:

Maternal deaths rose 56%, in Texas, from 2019 to 2022; nationally, maternal deaths rose 11%. Covid played a part, but these researchers said Texas’ abortion ban is the main reason behind Texas’ quintupling the national increase.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna171631

Where is this research published? I'm sincerely interested in the method used to assess confounding related to COVID and it's well established relationship with maternal mortality. The descriptive data are not particularly compelling. 

image.thumb.png.cc309984a4fe1501f434f2846b77ddc2.png

Posted

The data is from the last link I posted. Your question is the reason for propublica’s release cited in my post #6237. Texas law forbids review of data from maternal death that is considered abortion related.

Another example of Rs fucking up government, in order to “prove” government doesn’t work.

But, maternal death, in raw numbers, doesn’t require statistical analysis to fact check. Algebra works just fine.

Posted (edited)
54 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

The data is from the last link I posted.

The data in the NBC article you posted is Texas specific and runs through 2022. The MMWR report you cite is aggregate data that runs through 2021. It isn't a gotcha. It's a pretty simple question. Where is the detailed description of the methods and results of the research you cited? 

54 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

But, maternal death, in raw numbers, doesn’t require statistical analysis to fact check. Algebra works just fine.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

What I see in the crude rate charts is an increase from 2019 to 2020, and from 2020 to 2021, followed by a decrease from 2021 to 2022. The Texas abortion ban went into effect Sept 1, 2021. So 2022 is the only full year data under that policy. Overall 2022 rates are lower than both the 2021 and 2020 rates. The race/ethnicity segments are interesting, but the demographic segment with the lowest pre-2021 abortion rate has the greatest increase in maternal mortality. The race/ethnicity segments with the greatest abortion rates pre-2021 have much lower increase in maternal mortality rates. Pretty obvious this doesn't hang together, which is why I was sincerely interested in the analytical methods that led the "researchers" involved to their conclusion as you framed it: "Covid played a part, but these researchers said Texas’ abortion ban is the main reason behind Texas’ quintupling the national increase." COVID is probably driving the raw numbers. You suggested this was teased out in the analysis, but I don't see that. Probably a straightforward difference in differences analysis with some reasonable covariates would suffice. Doesn't have to be overly complex, "Algebra works fine" isn't really how this actually works unless you are in 7th grade math class. 

Edited by Anastasis
Posted
7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The data in the NBC article you posted is Texas specific and runs through 2022. The MMWR report you cite is aggregate data that runs through 2021. It isn't a gotcha. It's a pretty simple question. Where is the detailed description of the methods and results of the research you cited? 

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

What I see in the crude rate charts is an increase from 2019 to 2020, and from 2020 to 2021, followed by a decrease from 2021 to 2022. The Texas abortion ban went into effect Sept 1, 2021. So 2022 is the only full year data under that policy. Overall 2022 rates are lower than both the 2021 and 2020 rates. The race/ethnicity segments are interesting, but the demographic segment with the lowest pre-2021 abortion rate has the greatest increase in maternal mortality. The race/ethnicity segment with the greatest abortion rates pre-2021 have much lower increase in maternal mortality rates. Pretty obvious this doesn't hang together, which is why I was sincerely interested in the analytical methods that led the "researchers" involved to their conclusion as you framed it: "Covid played a part, but these researchers said Texas’ abortion ban is the main reason behind Texas’ quintupling the national increase." COVID is probably driving the raw numbers. You suggested this was teased out in the analysis, but I don't see that. Probably a straightforward difference in differences analysis with some reasonable covariates would suffice. Doesn't have to be overly complex, "Algebra works fine" isn't really how this actually works unless you are in 7th grade math class. 

No. Increase in maternal deaths year to year is pretty simple. Your beef is with the conclusions, reported by NBC, and claimed by the Gender Equality Research Institute, which attribute Texas’ quintupling the national average of maternal mortality to anti choice laws. Claims which I think I described accurately. The data GERI used to make their claim was from the CDC.

But, go ahead, and make your own claim, based on data which is designed by law to be opaque.

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Posted (edited)

  

4 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Increase in maternal deaths year to year is pretty simple.

From 2021 to 2022 there was actually a decrease. Which is kind of relevant, no?

 

5 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

claimed by the Gender Equality Research Institute, which attribute Texas’ quintupling the national average of maternal mortality to anti choice laws. Claims which I think I described accurately.

The NBC article didn't say anything about COVID at all. It is pretty clear that this wasn't really rigorous epidemiological research. It's a press release by a special interest group pushing half ass epi to NBC as an exclusive. Again, it would not be particularly hard to do a good analysis of this, controlling for confounding factors such as the substantial impact on maternal mortality related to COVID. But this is not that. 

Edited by Anastasis
Posted
14 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

  

The NBC article didn't say anything about COVID at all. 

From the link in the NBC article:

”While maternal mortality spiked overall during the pandemic, women dying while pregnant or during childbirth rose consistently in Texas following the state’s ban on abortion, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.”

Posted
3 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

From the link in the NBC article:

”While maternal mortality spiked overall during the pandemic, women dying while pregnant or during childbirth rose consistently in Texas following the state’s ban on abortion, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.”

My bad. That seems like a really rigorous analysis. 

Just read that statement and tell me exactly what data points directly support it. The crude maternal mortality rate actually went down after the state's abortion ban. I feel like I am in bizarro world. 

Posted (edited)
52 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Just read that statement and tell me exactly what data points directly support it. The crude maternal mortality rate actually went down after the state's abortion ban. I feel like I am in bizarro world. 

Nah. I’ll watch a movie with my wife, and then go to bed. You have the genuine curiosity. I’m pissed maternal mortality has spiked.

Edit: However, the ban on abortion: “Went into effect on August 25, 2022, 30 days after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade. This law makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.”

Edited by Willfully Horn
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Posted

Heartbeat bill, subject of that article, went into effect in 2021. The trigger law 30d after Dobbs in 2022. None of that helps support the interpretations of the data presented in the article you posted. If you move the landmark to 2022 it only further undermines their interpretation of the data. There is actually relevant epidemiology to consider. And then there is disinformation. The article you posted falls into the latter bucket.   

Posted (edited)
11 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

From the link in the NBC article:

While maternal mortality spiked during the pandemic, women dying while pregnant or during childbirth rose consistently in Texas following the state’s ban on abortion, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.”

11 hours ago, Anastasis said:

My bad. That seems like a really rigorous analysis. 

Just read that statement and tell me exactly what data points directly support it. The crude maternal mortality rate actually went down after the state's abortion ban. I feel like I am in bizarro world. 

Morning.

The data from 2019 and the data from 2022. 2020 and 2021 show the Covid spike.

”Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled — from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1. And Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births.”

Edited by Willfully Horn
Posted
6 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

The data from 2019 and the data from 2022. 2020 and 2021 show the Covid spike.

The problem with this approach is obvious, right?

Posted

Explain it to me like I’m in seventh grade.

I see an increase in maternal deaths in Texas that is half a magnitude greater than the average increase across the country, between ‘19 and ‘22.

Posted
3 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Explain it to me like I’m in seventh grade.

You posted a NBC "exclusive report" on a hack analysis from a special interest group and framed it as a compelling set of research results without actually critically thinking about it. 

Posted
1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

You posted a NBC "exclusive report" on a hack analysis from a special interest group and framed it as a compelling set of research results without actually critically thinking about it. 

Fuck off. I posted an NBC report on a claim by GERI. I next posted a propublica report that inferred any conclusion on CDC data was suspect due to info-silo, dark ages laws. 
 

I also reiterated, repeatedly, that Texas quintupled the national increase of maternal death.

Posted
18 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

I posted an NBC report on a claim by GERI.

Just some basic vetting should have set off the red flags. The article was from Sept and had already been posted here. Not sure how it came to the top of your feed, but come on man. 

Posted
Just now, Anastasis said:

Just some basic vetting should have set off the red flags. The article was from Sept and had already been posted here. Not sure how it came to the top of your feed, but come on man. 

Here is how I described that report: “but these researchers said Texas’ abortion ban is the main reason behind Texas’ quintupling the national increase.”

 

I don’t get your complaint.

 

 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Here is how I described that report: “but these researchers said Texas’ abortion ban is the main reason behind Texas’ quintupling the national increase.”

 

I don’t get your complaint.

The first tell should have been "research" disseminated via lay press without a real publication behind it. Serious people are going to publish their methodology and subject it to peer review. Hacks are going to run it out via uncritical "exclusive reports". 

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Posted
19 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

The first tell should have been "research" disseminated via lay press without a real publication behind it. Serious people are going to publish their methodology and subject it to peer review. Hacks are going to run it out via uncritical "exclusive reports". 

Yeah, you ought be more concerned with the number of deaths of pregnant Texans. That is something that concerns me.

Would that all hacks were honest enough to couch their conclusions as such:  “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” 
 

“Points to” is open ended enough to invite counter arguments; you offered yours. So, you, too are a hack?

Posted

Anti abortion folks don’t care about women dying. They are just vessels and a means to an end. And when they die, it was “God’s will” so they are absolved of any wrongdoing.

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Posted
9 hours ago, Goofyboy said:

Anti abortion folks don’t care about women dying. They are just vessels and a means to an end. And when they die, it was “God’s will” so they are absolved of any wrongdoing.

Blessed be the fruit.

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Posted
15 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Yeah, you ought be more concerned with the number of deaths of pregnant Texans. That is something that concerns me.

Would that all hacks were honest enough to couch their conclusions as such:  “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” 
 

“Points to” is open ended enough to invite counter arguments; you offered yours. So, you, too are a hack?

Confirmation bias is deeply entrenched with folks like Anastasis.  

Posted
16 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Yeah, you ought be more concerned with the number of deaths of pregnant Texans. That is something that concerns me.

Without googling it, tell me what the leading cause of maternal mortality is. 

Posted
6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Without googling it, tell me what the leading cause of maternal mortality is. 

Leading cause of death in the US is heart disease, so I figure the answer is heart disease. It’s possible Covid was the leading cause during the pandemic. Among women who don’t want to carry their pregnancy to term, botched abortions could be their number one cause of death, and we wouldn’t know. Reviewing those deaths is forbidden by law, due to the dark age dipshits, with whom you apparently agree.

Lack of quality medical care has to be on the upswing, though. At least in this state, as we watch on/gyns flee.

 

Posted

Given that preeclampsia is a common complication of pregnancy, that is actually a good guess. But the real answer is mental health disorders, including substance abuse disorder. Now if you want to hammer Texas specifically, and the united states more broadly, for our approach to mental health care, and talk about ways to meaningful reform that system, you will find an ally in me. If you just want to run out diversionary nonsense based on bad epidemiological analysis, not so much.  

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Posted

Sepsis rates in Texas are surging:

Quote

Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis.

The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found.

The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital.

ProPublica previously reported on two such cases in which miscarrying women in Texas died of sepsis after doctors delayed evacuating their uteruses. Doing so would have been considered an abortion.

The new reporting shows that, after the state banned abortion, dozens more pregnant and postpartum women died in Texas hospitals than had in pre-pandemic years, which ProPublica used as a baseline to avoid COVID-19-related distortions. As the maternal mortality rate dropped nationally, ProPublica found, it rose substantially in Texas.

ProPublica’s analysis is the most detailed look yet at a rise in life-threatening complications for women losing a pregnancy after Texas banned abortion. It raises concerns that the same pattern may be occurring in more than a dozen other states with similar bans.

To chart the scope of pregnancy-related infections, ProPublica purchased and analyzed seven years of Texas’ hospital discharge data.

When abortion was legal in Texas, the rate of sepsis for women hospitalized during second-trimester pregnancy loss was relatively steady.

Then the state’s first abortion ban went into effect and the rate of sepsis spiked.

“This is exactly what we predicted would happen and exactly what we were afraid would happen,” said Dr. Lorie Harper, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Austin.

She and a dozen other maternal health experts who reviewed ProPublica’s findings say they add to the evidence that the state’s abortion ban is leading to dangerous delays in care. Texas law threatens up to 99 years in prison for providing an abortion. Though the ban includes an exception for a “medical emergency,” the definition of what constitutes an emergency has been subject to confusion and debate.

Many said the ban is the only explanation they could see for the sudden jump in sepsis cases.

The new analysis comes as Texas legislators consider amending the abortion ban in the wake of ProPublica’s previous reporting, and as doctors, federal lawmakers and the state’s largest newspaper have urged Texas officials to review pregnancy-related deaths from the first full years after the ban was enacted; the state maternal mortality review committee has, thus far, opted not to examine the death data for 2022 and 2023.

The standard of care for miscarrying patients in the second trimester is to offer to empty the uterus, according to leading medical organizations, which can lower the risk of contracting an infection and developing sepsis. If a patient’s water breaks or her cervix opens, that risk rises with every passing hour.

Sepsis can lead to permanent kidney failure, brain damage and dangerous blood clotting. Nationally, it is one of the leading causes of deaths in hospitals.

While some Texas doctors have told ProPublica they regularly offer to empty the uterus in these cases, others say their hospitals don’t allow them to do so until the fetal heartbeat stops or they can document a life-threatening complication.

Last year, ProPublica reported on the repercussions of these kinds of delays.

Forced to wait 40 hours as her dying fetus pressed against her cervix, Josseli Barnica risked a dangerous infection. Doctors didn’t induce labor until her fetus no longer had a heartbeat.

Physicians waited, too, as Nevaeh Crain’s organs failed. Before rushing the pregnant teenager to the operating room, they ran an extra test to confirm her fetus had expired.

Both women had hoped to carry their pregnancies to term, both suffered miscarriages and both died.

In response to their stories, 111 doctors wrote a letter to the Legislature saying the abortion ban kept them from providing lifesaving care and demanding a change.

“It’s black and white in the law, but it’s very vague when you’re in the moment,” said Dr. Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN in San Antonio. When the fetus has a heartbeat, doctors can’t simply follow the usual evidence-based guidelines, he said. Instead, there is a legal obligation to assess whether a woman’s condition is dire enough to merit an abortion under a prosecutor’s interpretation of the law.

Some prominent Texas Republicans who helped write and pass Texas’ strict abortion bans have recently said that the law should be changed to protect women’s lives — though it’s unclear if proposed amendments will receive a public hearing during the current legislative session.

ProPublica’s findings indicate that the law is getting in the way of providing abortions that can protect against life-threatening infections, said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington.

“We have the ability to intervene before these patients get sick,” she said. “This is evidence that we aren’t doing that.”

A New View


Health experts, specially equipped to study maternal deaths, sit on federal agencies and state-appointed review panels. But, as ProPublica previously reported, none of these bodies have systematically assessed the consequences of abortion bans.

So ProPublica set out to do so, first by investigating preventable deaths, and now by using data to take a broader view, looking at what happened in Texas hospitals after the state banned abortion, in particular as women faced miscarriages.

“It is kind of mindblowing that even before the bans researchers barely looked into complications of pregnancy loss in hospitals,” said perinatal epidemiologist Alison Gemmill, an expert on miscarriage at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In consultation with Gemmill and more than a dozen other maternal health researchers and obstetricians, ProPublica built a framework for analyzing Texas hospital discharge data from 2017 to 2023, the most recent full year available. This billing data, kept by hospitals and collected by the state, catalogues what happens in every hospitalization. It is anonymized but remarkable in its granularity, including details such as gestational age, complications and procedures.

To study infections during pregnancy loss, ProPublica identified all hospitalizations that included miscarriages, terminations and births from the beginning of the second trimester up to 22 weeks’ gestation, before fetal viability. Since first-trimester miscarriage is often managed in an outpatient setting, ProPublica did not include those cases in this analysis.

When looking at stays for second-trimester pregnancy loss, ProPublica found a relatively steady rate of sepsis before Texas made abortion a crime. In late 2021, the state made it a civil offense to end a pregnancy after a fetus developed cardiac activity, and in the summer of 2022, the state made it a felony to terminate any pregnancy, with few exceptions.

In 2021, 67 patients who lost a pregnancy in the second trimester were diagnosed with sepsis — as in the previous years, they accounted for about 3% of the hospitalizations.

In 2022, that number jumped to 90.

The following year, it climbed to 99.

ProPublica’s analysis was conservative and likely missed some cases. It doesn’t capture what happened to miscarrying patients who were turned away from emergency rooms or those like Barnica who were made to wait, then discharged home before they returned with sepsis.

Our analysis showed that patients who were admitted while their fetus was still believed to have a heartbeat were far more likely to develop sepsis.

“What this says to me is that once a fetal death is diagnosed, doctors can appropriately take care of someone to prevent sepsis, but if the fetus still has a heartbeat, then they aren’t able to act and the risk for maternal sepsis goes way up,” said Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UW Medicine and an expert in pregnancy complications. “This is needlessly putting a woman’s life in danger.”

Studies indicate that waiting to evacuate the uterus increases rates of sepsis for patients whose water breaks before the fetus can survive outside the womb, a condition called previable premature rupture of membranes or PPROM. Because of the risk of infection, major medical organizations like the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise doctors to always offer abortions.

Researchers in Dallas and Houston examined cases of previable pregnancy complications at their local hospitals after the state ban. Both studies found that when women weren’t able to end their pregnancies right away, they were significantly more likely to develop dangerous conditions than before the ban. The study of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, not yet published, found that the rate of sepsis tripled after the ban.

Dr. Emily Fahl, a co-author of that study, recently urged professional societies and state medical boards to “explicitly clarify” that doctors need to recommend evacuating the uterus for patients with a PPROM diagnosis, even with no sign of infection, according to MedPage Today.

UTHealth Houston did not respond to several requests for comment.

ProPublica zoomed out beyond the second trimester to look at deaths of all women hospitalized in Texas while pregnant or up to six weeks postpartum. Deaths peaked amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and most patients who died then were diagnosed with the virus. But looking at the two years before the pandemic, 2018 and 2019, and the two most recent years of data, 2022 and 2023, there is a clear shift:

In the two earlier years, there were 79 maternal hospital deaths.

In the two most recent, there were 120.

Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, said it’s crucial to examine these deaths from different angles, as ProPublica has done. Data analyses help illuminate trends but can’t reveal a patient’s history or wishes, as a detailed medical chart might. Diving deep into individual cases can reveal the timeline of treatment and how doctors behave. “When you see them together, it tells a really compelling story that people are dying as a result of the abortion restrictions.”

Texas has no plans to scrutinize those deaths. The chair of the maternal mortality review committee said the group is skipping data from 2022 and 2023 and picking up its analysis with 2024 to get a more “contemporary” view of deaths. She added that the decision had “absolutely no nefarious intent.”

“The fact that Texas is not reviewing those years does a disservice to the 120 individuals you identified who died inpatient and were pregnant,” said Dr. Jonas Swartz, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University. “And that is an underestimation of the number of people who died.”

The committee is also prohibited by law from reviewing cases that include an abortion medication or procedure, which can also be used during miscarriages. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, a Democratic state representative filed a bill to overturn that prohibition and order those cases to be examined.

Because not all maternal deaths take place in hospitals and the Texas hospital data did not include cause of death, ProPublica also looked at data compiled from death certificates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It shows that the rate of maternal deaths in Texas rose 33% between 2019 and 2023 even as the national rate fell by 7.5%.

A New Imperative


Texas’ abortion law is under review this legislative session. Even the party that championed it and the senator who authored it say they would consider a change.

On a local television program last month, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the law should be amended.

“I do think we need to clarify any language,” Patrick said, “so that doctors are not in fear of being penalized if they think the life of the mother is at risk.”

State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who once argued that the abortion ban he wrote was “plenty clear,” has since reversed course, saying he is working to propose language to amend the ban. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told ProPublica, through a spokesperson, that he would “look forward to seeing any clarifying language in any proposed legislation from the Legislature.”

Patrick, Hughes and Attorney General Ken Paxton did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about what changes they would like to see made this session and did not comment on findings ProPublica shared.

In response to ProPublica’s analysis, Abbott’s office said in a statement that Texas law is clear and pointed to Texas health department data that shows 135 abortions have been performed since Roe was overturned without resulting in prosecution. The vast majority of the abortions were categorized as responses to an emergency but the data did not specify what kind. Only five were solely to “preserve [the] health of [the] woman.”

At least seven bills related to repealing or creating new exceptions to the abortion laws have been introduced in Texas.

Doctors told ProPublica they would most like to see the bans overturned so all patients could receive standard care, including the option to terminate pregnancies for health considerations, regardless of whether it’s an emergency. No list of exceptions can encompass every situation and risk a patient might face, obstetricians said.

“A list of exceptions is always going to exclude people,” said Dallas OB-GYN Dr. Allison Gilbert.

It seems unlikely a Republican-controlled Legislature would overturn the ban. Gilbert and others are advocating to at least end criminal and civil penalties for doctors. Though no doctor has been prosecuted for violating the ban, the mere threat of criminal charges continues to obstruct care, she said.

In 2023, an amendment was passed that permitted physicians to intervene when patients are diagnosed with PPROM. But it is written in such a way that still exposes physicians to prosecution; it allows them to offer an “affirmative defense,” like arguing self-defense when charged with murder.

“Anything that can reduce those severe penalties that have really chilled physicians in Texas would be helpful,” Gilbert said. “I think it will mean that we save patients’ lives.”

Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat from outside Dallas who filed a bill to create new health exceptions, said that ProPublica’s latest findings were “infuriating.”

She is urging Republicans to bring the bills to a hearing for debate and discussion.

Last session, there were no public hearings, even as women have sued the state after being denied treatment for their pregnancy complications. This year, though some Republicans appeared open to change, others have gone a different direction.

One recently filed a bill that would allow the state to charge women who get an abortion with homicide, for which they could face the death penalty.

 

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Posted (edited)

The persecuting has hit a higher gear,.

”Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton Announces Arrest of Hous­ton-Area Abor­tion­ist and Crack­down on Clin­ics Pro­vid­ing Ille­gal Abortions

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the arrest of Maria Margarita Rojas, 48, for providing illegal abortions and illegally operating a network of clinics in the Northwest Houston area. Rojas, a midwife known as “Dr. Maria,” was taken into custody in Waller County and charged with the illegal performance of an abortion, a second-degree felony, as well as practicing medicine without a license.”

https://www.oag.state.tx.us/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-announces-arrest-houston-area-abortionist-and-crackdown-clinics

Edited by Willfully Horn
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Posted
17 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

The persecuting has hit a higher gear,.

”Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton Announces Arrest of Hous­ton-Area Abor­tion­ist and Crack­down on Clin­ics Pro­vid­ing Ille­gal Abortions

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the arrest of Maria Margarita Rojas, 48, for providing illegal abortions and illegally operating a network of clinics in the Northwest Houston area. Rojas, a midwife known as “Dr. Maria,” was taken into custody in Waller County and charged with the illegal performance of an abortion, a second-degree felony, as well as practicing medicine without a license.”

https://www.oag.state.tx.us/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-announces-arrest-houston-area-abortionist-and-crackdown-clinics

Of the shitty things Paxton has done, this one probably deserves a wait and see approach.  If she really was performing abortions without a medical license, then that shouldn't be happening (regardless of any abortion ban) and it would be monumentally stupid on the accused's part.

 



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