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.

  • neomachino@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    I see stories like this a lot and can’t believe it. My wife was in a similar situation and had to get an emergency dnc, and still came close to dying from sepsis.

    The doctors were so on it, we waited in the ER for a while because they were packed but as soon as they took her blood and realized what was going on she was in surgery within the hour.

    Our son want even 2 at the time. If we were 30 minutes west she would’ve died. It’s absolutely fucking wild.

    How could anyone think this is right?

    • buttfarts@lemy.lol
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      12 days ago

      How could anyone think this is right?

      People who hate women do. Conservatives hate women and enjoying their suffering and pain is absolutely part of their motivation.

      It is too generous the benefit of the doubt to just say they are ambivalent about women suffering from this. Having the power to hurt other people is all they care and want