ProPublica published articles about two pregnant women who tragically passed away in Texas after medical professionals refused to provide critical care.
Colin Allred, Kamala Harris, and their allies in the media claim that Texas’ abortion ban caused these young mothers to die.
Here’s the truth.
Nevaeh Crain, Josseli Barnica, and their babies are victims of medical malpractice aggravated by inaccurate and politically-motivated media reporting.
Every American who grieves these deaths should ask why journalists continue to lead doctors to believe they cannot treat women in medical emergencies. Nevaeh Crain, her daughter, Lillian, and Josseli Barnica should not have died. The media has put pregnant women and their preborn children needlessly at risk by misrepresenting the law, in spite of new guidelines from the Texas Medical Board.
The women showed up to the emergency room with serious conditions, but doctors didn’t treat them because they believed the media’s claims that they could be sued for an illegal abortion if they delivered the baby early in order to save the mom.
Doctors should have immediately done a C-section or induction, for example, to try to save both the mother and baby, even if the child wouldn’t survive. State law explicitly allows intervention in medical emergencies.
Texas’ Pro-Life policies protect the mother as much as they protect the preborn baby. If the woman develops a serious condition, physicians don’t have to check for a heartbeat under state law; they don’t have to check the child’s age; they simply must intervene to save the mother, which often occurs by delivering the baby via C-section or induction.
Doctors should have done everything they could to save Josseli, Nevaeh, and their children. These tragedies arise when medical professionals believe corrupt coverage instead of following the law to treat pregnant women in emergencies.
Miscarriage treatment is NOT an abortion. That’s written directly in Texas law. Abortion ends a preborn life. Miscarriage treatment removes a child who has already passed away. No law protecting preborn babies from abortion prevents intervention for tragic cases of miscarriage.
*Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapter 245
Every Texas Pro-Life law contains a medical emergency exception and definition. If a pregnancy seriously threatens a mother’s life or major bodily function, Texas law lets doctors step in right away. The “medical emergency” exception in Texas’ policies allows life-saving treatment that might look like an abortion, but the intent is to protect the mother’s life—not to end the life of the unborn child.
Texas Health and Safety Code, Chapter 171
Despite the narrative, monthly data from the Health and Human Services Commission reveals most doctors in Texas are continuing to treat pregnant women and preborn children without interruption. They know they have a special opportunity to care for two lives at once.
Still, physicians, like those you hear about in the news, have been misled by the media and then abandoned by medical attorneys who are supposed to advise them. Doctors aren’t expected to be legal experts, but the experts and organizations that usually educate physicians on state law neglected their job. Mixed messages and blatant political activism from medical groups have muddied the water for many doctors on the front lines.
Texas Right to Life worked with the Texas Medical Board to provide guidelines for doctors: State law permits intervention whenever a mother faces a life-threatening condition; physicians don’t have to wait until she is on “death’s door,” as Democrats claim.
Americans should have sympathy for the Crain and Barnica families, and should be rightly outraged at media outlets that would rather advance an agenda even at the expense of women and babies.
The deaths of Nevaeh Crain, Josseli Barnica, and their children were preventable tragedies. By exploiting their deaths for a pro-abortion campaign, Democrats and journalists made political props out of mothers who should be alive today. Media outlets have created confusion in the last three years in order to erase the impact of Pro-Life laws: tens of thousands of babies saved from abortion.
Please pray for the Crain and Barnica families, and for the conversion of reporters and politicians who seek to legalize abortion again. Help us spread the truth about Pro-Life laws by sharing this article on social media.