A Texas woman with a potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy was denied emergency treatment due to concerns about the state’s stringent abortion ban.
Texas has imposed a near-total ban on abortions and, despite the law including exemptions for cases of extreme danger to the mother, doctors have been hesitant to provide care in rare circumstances for fear of government-issued penalties.
Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, a 25-year-old college senior, was told that her ectopic pregnancy – a situation when the embryo grows outside the uterus – could cause her fallopian tube to rupture, causing major internal bleeding.
Yet she claims physicians at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital refused to terminate the pregnancy, saying there was some chance the pregnancy was still viable.
She underwent emergency surgery at a different hospital when doctors realized when the ectopic pregnancy began to rupture, saying that if she had waited any longer, she would have been ‘in extreme danger of losing her life.’
R&I~Smit
PragDem