No abortion = More Sepsis?

Texas's surge in life threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss

Since 2021, being pregnant in my home state of Texas has become more and more dangerous. While the rest of the country’s maternal mortality rates were declining, the rate in Texas increased substantially. As the saying goes, I guess everything is bigger in Texas. Now, you may be wondering how a ban on abortion could be dangerous for a pregnant person—someone who is choosing to become a parent? It is not as complicated as you may think.

Unfortunately, many birthing people have complications during their pregnancy and not all are life-threatening; however, some are and they can result in death of the pregnant person or a miscarriage—enter in the new dangers Texas pregnant people are facing. When a miscarriage occurs in the second trimester, the normal procedure is to empty the uterus which is done by a procedure in a hospital/clinic. This is standard, according to medical organizations, and by doing this physicians and practitioners are lowering the chance of the patient—birthing person—to develop a serious infection. And this serious infection is something called sepsis. Sepsis is defined as: a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body's immune system overreacts to an infection, leading to widespread inflammation and organ damage. Simple enough, right? Wrong. This procedure is the same type of procedure commonly used to perform abortions.

With these new bans in place, sepsis cases dramatically increased. How is this possible? Many hospitals do not allow doctors to perform this procedure until they fetal heartbeat completely stops. So even though doctors and the birthing person knows that the fetus is dying and will not survive, they have to wait. It is this waiting where an infection can begin. According to the doctors that were interviewed for the ProPublica report, the waiting allows a patient’s water to break and their cervix to open and with every passing hour the infection gets worse. And in two horrible cases, two mothers, Josseli Barnica and Navaeh Cane, died because the physicians were told it would be a crime to intervene and induce labor in order to stop an infection from forming or spreading and causing organ failure.

These bans that were designed and written by legislators claim to be pro-life and yet these bans are causing more and more women to die from something that is completely preventable. These restrictions have scared physicians so much so that they are willing to forgo their oath to do no harm because they are afraid of the jail time—up to 99 years in prison. I would like to think I would have the bravado and courage to say “Fuck it! Ima do it anyway!” however, I cannot truly say that. I don’t know what I would do in their situation. Ninety-nine years in prison is a long time and you may think "surely they wouldn’t give someone 99 years” but they would make an example out of someone. These physicians signed up to provide care to their patients not to be a martyr—and I can honestly say I don’t blame them. It doesn’t make it right—but I understand their hesitancy, reluctance, and/or refusal.

Texas legislators signed into law something that directly correlates to this rise in sepsis cases. Thankfully not all sepsis cases lead to death but the chances of permanent damage or death is higher than not.

Now what? What does Texas do? Do our legislators even care that the drastic spike in life-threatening infections is a direct result of their laws? I’m always struck by the cognitive dissonance that “pro-life” folks posses because time and time again they continue to demonstrate they are pro-fetus and not pro-life. I know it all roots back to the church but I’ll save that those for another day .

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