Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

  • @[email protected]
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    472 months ago

    Around 1 in 5 pregnancies, that’s 20%, end in miscarriage. There’s a bit of a genetic lottery that is random within this crazy sensitive process of creating a baby. You can be doing everything right, but it doesn’t matter. You can lose the pregnancy and many do. And then, statistically, their next pregnancy is healthy and without complication.

    There’s no fault to a person in this progress, just like there’s no fault to how a flower grows - some have more pedals, some have crooked stems, some never grow and stay seeds in the ground. Texas killing this child for losing a pregnancy is akin to them having you roll a 5 sided dice and shooting anyone who lands on a “4” between the eyes.

    Ignorance and fear rule the red areas on the US map. Of course those red areas are populated predominately by trees, lakes and mountains, all of which are likely more intelligent and empathetic than the few frightened human voters spattered throughout that share that very rural landscape.

    • Schadrach
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      202 months ago

      Texas killing this child for losing a pregnancy

      Texas didn’t kill her for loosing a pregnancy - Texas killed her by making her losing the pregnancy take too long by terrifying doctors out of speeding the process along, causing her to be in and out of hospital ERs repeatedly while doctors essentially played “hot potato” with her despite all of them knowing what needed done out of fear of being thrown in prison for a century if they did it, causing her to eventually develop sepsis and die.

      It’s much, much worse than “killing her for losing a pregnancy”, and exactly how awful it is and how it got to that point needs to be spelled out in detail. Otherwise you’ll have people pointing out that the Texas law has an exception for medical emergencies, and it needs pointed out and doubled down on that by the time the doctors were reasonably certain that a conservative Texas court would agree with them it was a medical emergency (aka she’d already developed a systemic infection), she was already doomed.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      The sentiment is there, but 1 in 5 ending in miscarriage is not 1 in 5 that would be deadly if a miscarriage happened.

      Also, that number is known miscarriages (and is the high end i believe of the range). Even more happen before the mother even knows they are pregnant.

      Part of the reason you don’t tell people before the first trimester is over is because miscarriages before are common.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        Respectfully, I don’t know where you are pulling that equivalence from? I don’t believe I said 1 in 5 would likely die from losing a pregnancy? The extreme of what’s on the table being discussed is that Texas wants to overtly punish people for not being perfect fetal vessels - denying needed medical care and charging for crimes if they accuse that a miscarriage was coerced as determine by unqualified, backward religiously driven opinion.

        As you raise the point though, that “would be deadly” mention is dependent on the unknown of what happens when you deny basic medical maintenance to “common” conditions. Many miscarriages require medical abortion, regardless of how “smooth” they progress, to clear any remnants of the fetus from the uterus and avoid complications and dangerous bleeding, infection, etc that could harm that person or their womb and decrease chances of successful implantation, pregnancy and birth in the future, if desired. It’s a horribly painful and emotional process, something that nobody enters into lightly and that often is required for willing parents to be having difficulty conceiving and dealing with that loss, on top of everything else mentioned.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Respectfully, I don’t know where you are pulling that equivalence from? I don’t believe I said 1 in 5 would likely die from losing a pregnancy?

          Ummm dude

          Texas killing this child for losing a pregnancy is akin to them having you roll a 5 sided dice and shooting anyone who lands on a “4” between the eyes.

          You totally did, and this is what triggered my response.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            What are you talking about, friend? I feel like you have a fundamental disconnect here… Do you not know what “akin to” means?

            • @[email protected]
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              2 months ago

              Texas killing this child for losing a pregnancy is akin to them having you roll a 5 sided dice and shooting anyone who lands on a “4” between the eyes.

              Akin to

              very similar to something

              Texas killing this child for losing a pregnancy is very similar to having you roll a 5 sided dice and shooting anyone who lands on a “4” between the eyes.

              Your equating the 1 in 5 miscarriages to having a 1 in 5 chance of death but 1 in 5 miscarriages do not have a chance of death very similar to being shot if you roll a 4 on a 5 sided dice which is a 1 in 5 chance of death.

              Edit: Just cleaning this up as what I wrote got confusing…

              Your saying that 1 in 5 pregencies have a miscarriage (20%) and equate a miscarriage that happens 1/5 times, to being shot 1/5 times which would be death. But an (edit untreated) miscarriage doesn’t mean death. So it is not very similar to having a 1/5 chance of death by being shot.

              Maybe you don’t know what you wrote?

              • @[email protected]
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                12 months ago

                I mean, Texas wants to make miscarriage a murder charge and they are a death penalty state, so there’s that. There’s some hyperbole to make a point in original statement, but If it makes you feel better, Texas is currently forcing you to play Russian roulette if you land on that 4 - doesn’t change the spirit of the point being made. A gun is being put to your head with a meaningful chance of death.

                You’re arguing semantics here to avoid discussing the substance. Say something meaningful about the actual point or shut up at this point.

                • @[email protected]
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                  2 months ago

                  I love how post something very wrong, challenge it twice and ask if i even know what some words mean, which you clearly didnt, and then wave off how wrong you are and tell me to shut up.

                  I even said the sentiment is there.

                  What a jerk, you must be fun at parties

                  • @[email protected]
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                    12 months ago

                    Ah, so yes, absolutely nothing in your response about substance of the point still. Didn’t post anything “wrong” here, you absolute child. You just have no interest in an adult conversation about the actual issue, all highlighted by your “You must be fun at parties”

                    Now we all are ready for the impending “touch grass” coming from you… Just couldn’t resist showing your ass there at the end, huh?

                    You’re the kind of person that responds, “hitler’s hat was brown though, idiot!”, when someone posts, “hitler was an inhuman, genocidal maniac and a cowardly piece of shit in a stupid beige hat!”. You’re working to distract and drain energy and avoiding the point that matters about hitler.