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.
The hospital should be sued for death from negligence
By who, the state of Texas? This is what they want to happen.
The hospital was following Texas law. Any doctor who helped her would have been arrested.
“I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow. I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism. I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug. I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery. I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God. I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”
Instead of blaming doctors for not martyring themselves for the Hippocratic oath, we should be putting the blame on the lawmakers that created this scenario to begin with.
The hospital’s hands are tied by dystopian laws - this is what “pro life” looks like.
These are becoming way more common the more we let this right wing evil shit sink in.
I’m sorry but humans refusing to save the life of another human because of an obtuse law is unconscionable. They should have done what needed to be done and let the lawyers sort it out later.
It’s absolutely unconscionable, but it’s a medical (and very stupid/unnecessary) version of the trolley problem.
You’re a doctor. The tracks going one way have a single patient that you can treat and save. The tracks going the other way have every patient you’d get to see over the entirety of the rest of your career - literally thousands of people.
Treat the one and risk an avalanche of legal problems to include losing your license; the literal thousands of people are now fucked. Skip the one under the legal microscope, and she’s for-sure fucked, but your license lives to serve another day.
It’s fucked up. It’s evil. It’s what pro-life gets us.
You cannot expect a doctor to risk their freedom over a single patient. It’s like societal-level triage.
You can expect your lawmakers to not craft the world you live in into a dystopian hellscape… when they fail to live up to that expectation, don’t direct your anger at the people they’ve put into a bind; bring it directly to the lawmakers.
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Right, I don’t disagree with you, but there is no legal ground on which to sue the hospital. They acted as they were legally required, the law will be on their side. I’d say go after the politicians involved for wrongful death, if it weren’t for qualified immunity.
Honestly, I just hope anyone able and willing to leave such shithole states are able to do so, although that’s obviously much easier than done. Their leadership has clearly failed them and does not care about them. :(
Greg Abbott and Donald Trump should be sued for maliciously causing death.