Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.

Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.

  • @leftzero
    6•25 days ago

    I don’t give a flying fuck why they didn’t help her or what the law says.

    They’re monstrous torturers and murderers, regardless of their reasons or lack thereof.

    You don’t let someone suffer and die when you have the means to save them, regardless of the consequences, except possibly if those consequences would lead to greater suffering and death (trolley problem). Especially if you call yourself a doctor. (And no, the possibility of going to prison does not count as greater suffering and death, no matter how much of a sociopath you are).

    • @[email protected]English
      26•25 days ago

      It’s easy to sacrifice someone else to the system. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but if these doctors have to stop practicing medicine then more women will die.

      Point the blame at the right people.

      • @leftzero
        2•25 days ago

        but if these doctors have to stop practicing medicine then more women will die

        Whatever these so called doctors are practicing is the opposite of medicine.

        If they were to stop practicing it, at least they wouldn’t have the opportunity to torture and murder more victims, and maybe some real doctors would get their jobs and be able to help.

        There’s no excuse for collaborating with a fascist regime. The ones obeying the orders are just as guilty as the ones giving them.

        • @[email protected]English
          14•25 days ago

          Do you really think OB/GYN are lining up to be doctors in Texas?

          Why are you not taking it into your own hands? You’ve not exhausted your own extralegal options, but you’re calling on others to do it.

          • @leftzero
            3•25 days ago

            I’m lucky enough to live in a relatively civilised country (comparatively at least; everything can be improved), not some fascist hellhole like the USA.

            Unlike the monsters who tortured and murdered this woman, however, I do use the opportunities and means I have to help people around me, but said people are lucky enough to not be anywhere near the USA.

        • @[email protected]
          1•24 days ago

          That’s pretty easy to say when you’re not on the hook and not one of the few doctors that didn’t leave for blue states when the shit hit the fan.