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.
Not sure how doctors can willingly comply with this shit. Seems antithetical to the Hippocratic oath.
Pretty simple when the alternative is prison
Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General who is primarily responsible for the present situation, used to be my local state senator.
I specifically kept my voter registration in Texas during my college years so that I could continue to cast my vote against him. There is nothing good to say about that evil man.
I like Texas, and I hope that at some point we figure out how to govern it in a sane way, because I unfortunately cannot recommend living there right now.
Ahhh shit. It’s a young attractive white girl. They might actually pay attention to this one. Maybe…
Not married, though, so I wouldn’t count on it.
No, Fox News prefers to talk about the Democrat villains or the Haitian scapegoats instead.
Monstrous. Just monstrous.
Sad thing is that these stories don’t seem to get in front of the people who need to hear them. The media censorship in right wing media is as aggressive as the media censorship that they think exists in traditional media outlets.
Another accusation that masks an admission? I’m shocked!
She did her part keeping the hospital beds available for more profitable patients. It’s the American way. As long as our hospitals (and government) prioritize profits over health, there will be no end to these stories.
I keep saying single-payer healthcare is better than what we have now and get attacked for it. “I’m fine - you’re fine - my kids are fine! Stop saying you want everything for free!” Just because we are ok doesn’t mean everyone else is, you selfish prick.
Remind them it ain’t free. I pay a really small amount of my income tax for this health care.
I mean. All-in, my total income tax is 1% lower than yours on the same income, and I get the healthcare thrown in, and our lower 10% now get free dental care, and now it’s covering more than fillings and cleanings, and now we’re talking vision care … But yeah, just efficient. Not free.
Where were all the pro-lifers? Oh, that’s right, they only care about you before birth. My mistake.
Literally just had an argument with a born again Christian who didn’t want tampons in bathrooms… because tax payers would have to pay and it was the parents responsibility
This guy though has no problem with collecting the pension from tax payers or the church not paying tax.
That’ll teach those sinful women for daring to have sex without their owners’ permission. Even stuff like this won’t sway the committed republicunts since they can fall back on some bullshit about “god’s plan” or find ways to turn it back on the victims of their politics.
Is there a database that collects these cases? I’m not from the US, but I think it would make a lot of sense to have a website that documents all those cases, so one could point people to it if necessary.
I imagine it would be a HIPAA violation for hospitals to release these details; you only hear about the ones that the individual families decide to make public by speaking to journalists…
…so it’s even worse/more common than you think.
Stop saying “died” - Another woman was MURDERED by ignorant texas bigots in their government and spiteful, irresponsible, freedom-hating voter base.
cruz, abbott, patrick, gohmert, cornyn and cock-eyed Ken the AG, along with trump, corrupt SCOTUS majority and the whole gop giving them cover, are soaked in this woman’s blood.
She was a white woman, literally named heaven HEAVEN backwards, and she’s still dead, you absolute cowards that voted to enable this. Y When will you realize that you’re not safe from this, you’re not different, you’re not “one of the good ones” that will see some protections others won’t. Go have someone read a short poem to you, commonly referred to as, “first they came for”. There will be plenty of words in there you don’t understand, but the gist is, YOU OR YOUR DAUGHTER ARE FUCKING NEXT UP - this dead teenager, who never saw her 20th birthday, is the latest Handmaid they throw on the wall as an example to others of what’s coming.
There won’t be an official announcement when christian fascism takes over your area or else there would have been one a while 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.
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.
The people that voted for this shit have the biggest blinders on right now. I’m sure they’re trying to ignore that anything has gone wrong.
I hope someone with enough money to make this a problem for the policy makers gets after this in court soon. The USA needs to either pass a federal law stating that abortion is legal, or they need a new roe v. Wade judgement on the books. Until one of those things happens, this continual and unnecessary loss of life will continue; it is inevitable.
For people who call themselves “pro-life” they sure don’t give any shits about people continuing to live.
Anyone who is anti abortion, this is for you: 🖕
Sincerely,
- your horrified neighbor to the north.
This is exactly the goal of force birth policies.
Women who don’t survive are considered weak and must be cleansed for Republicans’ perfect society. It’s eugenics. Killing women is the point, in the minds of Republicans every woman who dies deserves it.
Hey, remember that former Trump aide and professional jackass, John McEntee, who said he didn’t see any evidence of women being injured as a result of anti-abortion laws? Funnily enough, he has been conspicuously silent on the subject since. Instead, he’s now making “jokes” about repealing the 19th amendment. A real piece of work.
CW: SA
Remember Todd Akin’s comment on sexual assault?
"It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
Not that it matters if an abortion is requested due to rape or any other reason, but this quote really drives home that it isn’t really about protecting children despite that last line: they think all women who get abortions should be punished for being murderous sluts despite all evidence to the contrary.
Absolutely horrifying.
The second ER diagnosed her with sepsis and then sent her home because her fetus had a heartbeat.
I’m disgusted. If you are a woman, you need to get the fuck out of these death trap states. It is not safe for you there.
The second ER diagnosed her with sepsis and then sent her home
That right there should be criminal charges. Pregnancy staus is irrelevant at that point. Sepsis will kill you if untreated.
It was the politicians in Texas that harmed this woman. Not the hospital. The Texas AG sent letters to every hospital in Texas saying he would press criminal charges to anyone granting an emergency abortion. As hard as it is for poor and middle class workers, there’s no way any nurse doctor or hospital is going to put themselves in front of the Texas government. If they could they would have left the state already. (many have.) Small towns in forced birth States literally have no pregnancy care facilities because the staff has all left.
Just following orders.
But they saved the “baby” right?
Imo it’s premeditated murder.
It’s one of the main reasons I got a vasectomy
Maybe don’t let your conservative colleagues know that. They tend to think less of men who get vasectomies for some reason. That could negatively affect how you are perceived at work. Just FYI, from a guy who spent a lifetime working with these cunts.
I tell everybody as soon as they ask me if I have kids and I live in a very, very conservative area. Fuck em.
I’ve known (or dated) a few conservative men who refused to get vasectomies because they “lower testosterone”. And, of course that means they’re less of a man (to themselves and others who think that way).
Is that even true?? You still have your balls, the sperm just doesn’t have an exit route anymore. Like, biology is weird as shit, I could see that somehow causing testosterone to drop slightly for some weird ass reason, but I’ve never heard of it.
It is absolutely not true. A vasectomy cannot lower testosterone.
Unfortunately, conservatives are opposed to science, so the research on this topic will be ignored by them.
I figured, but man, they’re always learning weird new shit about the body, lol.
The funny thing is the dudes worried about low T don’t know T that is too high (according to your body, not according to what you want) just converts to estrogen… which you would think they would be a lot more concerned about, given their anxieties about being too feminine!
Lol, I did not know that! That’s good to know!
I should have put that in quotes to avoid confusion. I’ll edit :)
Luckily everyone I work with are liberals. Remote jobs are pretty nice.
the second ER did not diagnose her with sepsis, they diagnosed her with strep throat and a UTI. some portion of responsibility IMO lies with that OB-GYN for screwing up that diagnosis, although i understand the larger point of the article seems to be that doctors are reluctant to diagnose or treat really any condition in pregnant women for fear of getting legally crushed by the state
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.
At the second, she screened positive for sepsis
From the article.
The first one said strep. The second one said sepsis.
it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding here but I think the sepsis diagnosis is from a retrospective review of her file. at the time there was no sepsis diagnosis. they even specifically call out that doctor for having been under review for missing diagnoses in the past
After two hours of IV fluids, one dose of antibiotics, and some Tylenol, Crain’s fever didn’t go down, her pulse remained high, and the fetal heart rate was abnormally fast, medical records show. Hawkins noted that Crain had strep and a urinary tract infection, wrote up a prescription and discharged her.
Hawkins had missed infections before. Eight years earlier, the Texas Medical Board found that he had failed to diagnose appendicitis in one patient and syphilis in another. In the latter case, the board noted that his error “may have contributed to the fetal demise of one of her twins.” The board issued an order to have Hawkins’ medical practice monitored; the order was lifted two years later. (Hawkins did not respond to several attempts to reach him.)
Could be. I read the strep and UTI as having been written down either from the previous hospital or by the patient and her mother based on the previous hospital visit.
And while it sounds like Hawkins is not someone you’d want to be in charge of your care, it seems like there were a lot more failures here than just one bad doctor.
