AUSTIN (Nexstar) — This week, a report from the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica made public the 2021 death of Josseli Barnica, a 28 year-old mother who died of sepsis due to an untreated miscarriage.
According to their reporting, her doctors told her it would be a “crime” to treat her until the fetus’ heart stopped beating, ultimately delaying her care and causing her death.
The story has reinvigorated the concern that Texas’ abortion ban does not give doctors enough autonomy to treat pregnancy complications.
U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate who has made abortion access a central tenant of his campaign, quickly used Barnica’s story as a critique of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s anti-abortion stance.
“Josseli Barnica should be alive today but because of Ted Cruz’s cruel abortion ban, Texas women have been denied the life-saving health care they need,” Allred wrote on social media.
Cruz called the story “heartbreaking,” but said Texas’ law is not to blame.
“I’ve read the story here, and the facts of the case seem heartbreaking. That this woman lost her life is truly a tragedy,” Cruz told reporters after a rally in Georgetown on Wednesday. “The Texas law makes clear that any procedure that is necessary to save the life of a mother can be done and should be done. We don’t know all the details of what happened here, but it is critical that we do everything necessary to save the lives of moms and we grieve with the family at the tragedy that occurred here.”
Texas law prohibits abortion in nearly all cases, without exceptions for rape or incest. Physicians may be punished for performing abortions with six-figure fines, the loss of their medical license, and prison time.
But abortion is allowed if, as is written in the law, “in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”
Physicians have sued to argue that language is too vague, claiming the “reasonable medical judgment” standard is too subjective to allow them to act freely without concern for their own liability.
In May, the Texas Supreme Court rejected those concerns, ruling that the abortion ban’s exceptions are acceptable and permit abortions before imminent emergencies.
“The law does not require a woman to surrender her life or to first suffer serious bodily injury before an abortion may be performed,” the court wrote.
According to October polling from the Texas Politics Project, 7% of Texas likely voters say abortion/women’s rights is the most important issue to their vote, trailing the economy, immigration/border security, and inflation/cost of living.