#texas abortion ban

[lifewithchronicpain]

Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, remember her name because she is the first woman to be reported* to die from the fall of Roe and the Texas abortion ban. She won't be the last.

*There may be others we don't know about, but she is the first to make any kind of news that I have heard about.

The New Yorker link has limited access and I could only see it long enough to catch her name and find the response post that also includes details of her death. I first heard of this on the Rachel Maddow show. Here are some quotes:

Today, The New Yorker published a heart-breaking piece about Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a 29 year-old woman who died a few weeks after Roe was overturned. In the headline, the magazine asks, “Did An Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?” The answer, without a doubt, is yes. So why is it so hard to say so? Anyone who works in the abortion rights world knows that bans have killed multiple people since Roe was overturned. The public hasn’t heard their stories, though, because families understandably don’t want their loved ones’ lives and deaths picked apart by reporters and anti-abortion activists. It’s only a matter of time, for example, before Republicans and conservative groups claim that Yeni’s death had nothing to do with Texas’ abortion ban. They’ll point to how the young woman could be inconsistent taking her hypertension medication, or the time she missed an appointment with a maternal fetal medicine specialist. They will find a way to blame her...

Yeni would be alive if she was given an abortion. Yet this young woman with hypertension, diabetes and a history of pulmonary edema was never even talked to about ending her pregnancy. Not when she went to the emergency room of a Catholic hospital just 7 weeks into her pregnancy with breathing problems, not when she visited an affiliated OBGYN who told Yeni she was at risk of having a heart attack and stroke. Abortion wasn’t even mentioned when Yeni was so ill that she had to be transferred to a bigger hospital where records stated she was at “high risk for clinical decompensation/death.” As OBGYN Joanne Stone, former president of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, told The New Yorker, “If she weren’t pregnant, she likely wouldn’t be dead.”

This is an election year and we are posed to either re-elect Biden who will appoint a judge that would bring the courts back to balance. Or Trump who is responsible for appointing judges specifically to end Roe v Wade.

There is so little the average American can do about this, but most of us have the power to vote. Please use it. And please pay attention to your local races too.

[michaelpaul7]

Brought to you by the pro-life party...🤔

[artworktragedy]

WIN! New Mexico Legally Protecting Abortion; Providers and Women

Abortion Is Not Murder New Mexico has joined the fight for abortion rights and the protection as well as the right for women to have safe, legal healthcare… This comes to me shortly after another state- North Dakota- which I posted on my Facebook fan page made their Supreme Court ruling. A ruling which is in alignment with New Mexico in saying that they refuse to punish or stop women from…

[pohutukawa22]

This is disgusting!

Going back to the Dark Ages.

[liberalsarecool]

Republicans want women/mothers to live in fear, then die in agony.

Denying health care to a pregnant teen pleading for help would make Trump and Vance chuckle.

This is their misogynist dream come true.

[thashining]

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A post shared by Joy-Ann Reid (@joyannreid)

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the GOP’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/4ed8FZM

[batboyblog]

abotion bans will caused more deaths

not will, have

she's not the only one, often we talk about abortion bans causing more deaths we're talking about people undertaking dodgy illegal or DIY abortions, but in states like Texas, its not even women trying to have abortions for unwanted pregnancy, its women in the middle of medical emergencies who can't get help, who go to the ER and no one will help them. If you get pregnant in a state with an abortion ban you are in serious danger.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Just a few years ago, maternal mortality was the rare reproductive justice issue that seemed to transcend partisan politics. In late 2018, Republicans and Democrats in Congress even came together to approve $60 million for state maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) to study why so many American women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Donald Trump—not exactly famous for his respect toward pregnant women and new mothers in his personal life—signed the bill.

But some Republicans’ enthusiasm for these committees began to wane at around the same time abortion rights advocates began warning that draconian restrictions on reproductive care would only push the shamefully high US maternal mortality rate—the worst among affluent countries—even higher. Nor did conservatives, like Idaho lawmakers, appreciate the policy recommendations that came out of many MMRCs.

Texas, whose record on maternal mortality (and maternal health more broadly) has been an embarrassment since long before Dobbs, has a history of controversial attempts to play down potentially unwelcome findings from its MMRC. After the Dobbs decision, when the state committee was working on its report examining maternal deaths in 2019, Texas officials decided to slow-roll its release until mid-2023—too late for lawmakers to act on its recommendations. “When we bury data, we are dishonorably burying each and every woman that we lost,” one furious committee member told the Texas Tribune. Ultimately, officials released the report three months late, in December 2022. Soon afterward, the Legislature reconfigured the MMRC, increasing its size—but also ejected one of its most outspoken members.

Now Texas officials have stirred up the biggest furor yet, appointing a leading anti-abortion activist to the panel. Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN who practiced in San Antonio for 25 years, will join the MMRC as a community member representing rural areas (even though she is from the seventh-largest city in the US). But she also represents a largely overlooked segment of the anti-abortion movement: researchers who seek to discredit the idea that abortion restrictions are putting women’s lives in danger. To the contrary, Skop and her allies argue that abortions are the real, hidden cause of many maternal deaths��and that abortion restrictions actually save mothers’ lives.

One of several doctors suing to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, the medication abortion drug at the center of one of this term’s blockbuster Supreme Court cases, Skop has been a familiar face on the anti-abortion expert-witness circuit for more than a decade. She has frequently testified in favor of strict abortion bans in court cases, state legislatures, and before Congress. In a high-profile case this winter, she submitted an affidavit stating that a Dallas woman named Kate Cox— who was seeking a judge’s permission to terminate a nonviable pregnancy—did not qualify for an abortion under Texas’s medical exception. The Texas Supreme Court rejected Cox’s petition, and to get medical care, the 31-year-old mother of two had to flee the state. Apparently, Skop’s hard-line stance against abortion-ban exemptions extends to children. At a 2021 congressional hearing, she testified that rape or incest victims as young as 9 or 10 could potentially carry pregnancies to term. “If she is developed enough to be menstruating and become pregnant, and reached sexual maturity,” Skop said, “she can safely give birth to a baby.”

Skop’s relatively new role as vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has solidified her standing in the anti-abortion firmament. Lozier, which has positioned itself as the anti-abortion alternative to the Guttmacher Institute, described Skop’s role as “coordinat[ing] the work of Lozier’s network of physicians and medical researchers who counter the abortion industry’s blizzard of misinformation with science and statistics for life.” Elsewhere on its website, Lozier notes that Skop’s “research on maternal mortality, abortion, and women’s health has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals.”

What her Lozier bio doesn’t mention is that three of the studies Skop co-authored about the purported risks of abortion were retracted by their publisher this February. Attorneys representing Skop and her fellow anti-abortion doctors had cited the studies in the FDA-mifepristone case. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, an independent review of the papers found “fundamental problems,” “incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors,” “misleading presentations,” and undisclosed conflicts of interest between the studies’ authors (including Skop) and anti-abortion advocacy groups (including Lozier). In a rebuttal on its website, Lozier called the publisher’s move “meritless,” adding, “There is no legitimate reason for [the] retractions.”

Skop’s work on maternal mortality hasn’t received the same attention as those papers—yet. But her reflections on maternal deaths in the US have raised plenty of eyebrows.

Skop has argued repeatedly that abortions are directly and indirectly behind the rise in maternal mortality in the US. In a 53-page “Handbook of Maternal Mortality” she wrote for Lozier last year, she says that CDC maternal mortality data can’t be trusted in part because “there is much unreported maternal mortality and morbidity associated with legal, induced abortion, often obscured due to the political nature of the issue.” She claims that a history of abortions puts women at risk in pregnancy, childbirth, or during the postpartum period—whether from maternal complications she contends are linked to prior abortions, or from mental health problems, such as drug addiction and suicide, purportedly caused by abortion regret.

In another paper co-written with some of the same co-authors as in her retracted studies, Skop and her colleagues call for an overhaul of how states and the CDC collect maternal mortality data, urging the inclusion of “mandatory certification of all fetal losses,” including abortions.

And whereas the vast majority of public health experts predict that maternal deaths and near-deaths will increase in states with abortion bans, Skop takes the opposite view. In yet another Lozier paper, she lists 12 reasons why states with abortion bans will have fewer maternal deaths. For instance, she argues, because of abortion restrictions, women will have fewer later-term abortions, which tend to be more dangerous to women than first-trimester procedures. (In fact, researchers report, that state bans have led to an increase in second-trimester abortions.) She claims that since women who don’t have abortions won’t have mental health problems supposedly associated with pregnancy loss, their alleged risk of postpartum suicide would be reduced. (In fact, the idea that abortion regret is widespread and dangerous has been thoroughly debunked.) Skop makes a similar argument about abortion’s purported (and disproven) link to breast cancer, arguing that fewer abortions will mean fewer women dying of malignant tumors.

Much of Skop’s advocacy work has been done in collaboration with colleagues who share her strong ideological views. MMRCs, by contrast, have a public health role that is supposed to transcend politics—their focus is on analyzing the deaths of expectant and new mothers that occur within a year of the end of the pregnancy. Typically, committee members come from a wide range of professional backgrounds: In Texas, these include OB-GYNs, high-risk pregnancy specialists, nurses, mental health providers, public health researchers, and community advocates. Panels also aim to be racially and geographically diverse, the better to understand the communities—Black, Indigenous, rural, poor—where mothers are at disproportionate risk of dying. In a country that hasn’t prioritized maternal health, MMRCs are uniquely positioned to identify system failures and guide policy changes that can save lives.

Texas’s most recent maternal mortality report found that 90% of maternal deaths were preventable, racial disparities in maternal outcomes weren’t improving, and severe childbirth complications were up 23%—all before the state’s abortion bans took effect.

It remains to be seen how someone with Skop’s background and agenda will fit in with her new colleagues, especially at this dire moment for women in the state. Maternal health advocates aren’t optimistic: “This appointment speaks volumes about how seriously certain state leaders are taking the issue of maternal mortality,” Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, told The Guardian. “It is another sign that the state is more interested in furthering their anti-abortion agenda than protecting the lives of pregnant Texans.”

Skop, contacted through Lozier, didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a statement to the Texas Tribune, Skop said she was joining the Texas MMRC because questions about maternal mortality data deserve “rigorous discourse.” “There are complex reasons for these statistics, including chronic illnesses, poverty, and difficulty obtaining prenatal care, and I have long been motivated to identify ways women’s care can be improved,” she said. “For over 30 years, I have advocated for both of my patients, a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and excellent medicine shouldn’t require I pit one against the other.”

Meanwhile, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists criticized Skop’s appointment, asserting that members of any maternal mortality review committee should be “unbiased, free of conflicts of interest and focused on the appropriate standards of care.”

“The importance of the work done by MMRCs to inform how we respond to the maternal mortality crisis cannot be overstated,” the group said in a statement. “It is crucial that MMRC members be clinical experts whose work is informed by data, not ideology and bias.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

They are killing us. I don’t know any other way to put it. Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick. Candi Miller. Amber Nicole Thurman.  And now,  Josseli Barnica—a 28-year old mother, whose smiling face in a selfie she took with her daughter made me weep as soon as I read ProPublica’s headline: “A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage.”

Josseli died in 2021, before Roe was overturned but after Texas passed SB 8. Even though she was miscarrying at just 17 weeks into her pregnancy with no chance for the fetus’ survival, doctors told Josseli they couldn’t treat her while there was still a heartbeat. By the time her Houston hospital intervened, she had spent two days with a fetus pressed up against her open cervix, exposing her to bacteria. Josseli died of a preventable infection three days later.  I am heartbroken, but more than that I am just so angry. I am angry that this young beautiful woman is dead. I am angry that her now-4 year-old daughter will grow up without a mother. I am angry that we have to live in a country where our lives are treated as disposable. And I am really, truly furious about what I know will come next.  Anti-abortion groups will rush to send out tweets and press releases with phony condolences, insisting that Texas’ law allows life-saving care. They will blame doctors for not acting quickly enough, the hospital for not giving providers clear enough guidance—even pro-choicers for ‘scaring’ doctors out of treating patients. Anything to shirk blame and to wash the blood off their hands. 

We cannot let that happen.  When Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America comes out with a statement promising that abortion bans protect women, I want you to remember that they lobbied against exceptions for women’s lives. When the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) claims that Josseli should have been given care, remember that the ‘care’ they’re referring to isn’t an abortion—but a forced c-section or vaginal labor. That’s because these groups believe abortion is never necessary to save a person’s life. They use language and push for laws accordingly.  Most of all, I want us to remember—and for all Americans to know—that these organizations and legislators knew this would happen. They knew women would suffer and die as a result of their laws and decided to pass them anyway. There is no press release or talking point that can paper over that truth: they decided our deaths were an acceptable trade-off for a political win. 

When I say that the anti-abortion movement planned for deaths like Josseli’s, I mean it literally. In October 2022, I warned that conservatives had launched a preemptive messaging campaign to blame doctors and abortion rights activists for women’s deaths. Today, two full years later, we’re watching Republicans insist that it’s not bans endangering women, but pro-choice “misinformation” about the laws.  They didn’t just plan to avoid responsibility for our deaths, though—they planned to cover them up. There is a reason that Republicans are disbanding maternal mortality review committees, or stacking them with anti-abortion activists. In Texas, where Josseli was killed, Republicans put a well-known extremist on the state's maternal death board just a few months ago: Ingrid Skop has made a career out of arguing that maternal mortality statistics can’t be trusted and that abortion bans won’t lead to maternal deaths. 

Jessica Valenti wrote in Abortion, Every Day that the anti-abortion movement is gaslighting the people about the deaths caused by strict abortion bans such as Amber Nicole Thurman and Josseli Barnica.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Tex-ass Republicans are stone cold killers.

🤬

[vintageseawitch]

TW: pregnancy complications, sepsis, maternal & fetal deaths, anti-abortion laws

WHITE WOMEN WHO ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP: YOUR WHITENESS WILL NOT SAVE YOU. THIS YOUNG WOMAN WAS WHITE & FROM A REPUBLICAN, PRO-LIFE FAMILY. SHE DIED ANYWAYS BECAUSE OF NOT GETTING TREATMENTS THAT WOULD BE AN EVERY DAY OCCURRENCE IN PLACES WHERE THESE DRACONIAN LAWS DON'T EXIST.

HER WHITENESS DID NOT SAVE HER. HER BEING PRO-LIFE DID NOT SAVE HER. IN A TRUMP AMERICA, YOU WILL MATTER JUST AS MUCH AS SHE DID. THE MEN IN YOUR LIFE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. OTHER WOMEN VOTING LIKE THIS DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU OR THEMSELVES.

PLEASE VOTE BLUE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHARE THAT YOU DID & YOU CAN PRETEND YOU VOTED FOR TRUMP IF ONLY TO KEEP YOURSELVES SAFE. PLEASE VOTE FOR KAMALA 💙