State of Texas: Woman’s death highlights divide over abortion ban in Senate race

  

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.

High stakes in local races for many Texas voters

While the presidential and Senate races have taken center stage this election cycle, there are several local races across the state with high stakes as well.

In Amarillo, a proposition to make the city a sanctuary for the unborn is on the ballot. Proposition A would allow citizens to sue anyone aiding an Amarillo citizen in getting an abortion. It would also make it illegal to travel through the city while seeking an abortion.

After multiple iterations of that ordinance were rejected by the Amarillo City Council, its adoption has been left to local voters as a measure on the Nov. 5, 2024 ballot.

U.S. House races in South Texas could determine control of Congress this year.

Texas’ District 34 race is a rematch from 2022 when Republican Mayra Flores lost to Democratic Congressman Vicente Gonzalez. Flores held the seat for a couple of months after winning a special election in 2022 before losing to Gonzalez in November. Redistricting pushed Gonzalez into District 34; he previously represented District 15.

In District 15, Republican Monica De La Cruz is facing a challenge from Democratic entrepreneur Michelle Vallejo. The district flipped red for the first time in history in 2022.

East Texas has seen record turnout in early voting this year, fueled in part by state House races.

Democrat Cody Grace is facing an uphill battle to flip Texas House District 6, which includes the city of Tyler. Grace is running against Republican Daniel Alders in the red-leaning district. The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Matt Schaefer, who did not run for reelection after serving 12 years in the Texas House.

In Texas House District 7, Republican Jay Dean is trying to hold on to his seat. He faces a challenge from Marlena Cooper, a Democrat from Longview.

The mayor’s race is back on the ballot in Austin after voters decided to move the election to run concurrently with the presidential race. Incumbent Mayor Kirk Watson served a half term and is now facing four challengers. Running to unseat him are former Austin City Council member Kathie Tovo and community organizers Carmen Llanes Pulido, Jeffrey Bowen and Doug Greco.

Voters in Travis County will also decide whether to approve a tax rate increase to fund affordable child care. According to county staff, the tax rate increase would generate roughly $75 million for the county in the first year. It would cost the average homeowner roughly $125 in the same time period.

In Lubbock, a $103 million bond is on the ballot for street improvements throughout the city. The funding could help with a project to replace the crumbling bricks on the historic Broadway Street.

Land purchase clears path for state-funded border wall segment

A Texas agency has bought a ranch on the border in rural Starr County where the state plans to build more border wall.

The Texas General Land Office on Tuesday announced it purchased a 1,400-acre ranch where corn and other crops were being grown and the state will build a 1.5-mile new segment of border wall on the property.

The land is near where Texas built its first, 1.7-mile segment of state-funded border wall in 2022 as part of the state’s Operation Lone Star border security initiative.

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham told Border Report on Tuesday that the agency had been trying to acquire the land for a while because of reports that the area is notorious for sexual assaults of migrant women and children by Mexican drug cartel and human trafficking organizations.

“This is a high-traffic area at the border. A lot of terrible things happening there,” Buckingham said via a Zoom interview from Austin. “Because the landowner was not allowing law enforcement nor the border wall to be built on her property, once the bad guys know this is a free pass zone, then they just start running through. And the stories that I was hearing as we were getting closer and closer to acquiring this property were just heartbreaking. It was story after story of abused women and children.”

The agency bought the land on Oct. 23 with mineral revenue and Buckingham said the purchase was approved by two independent boards.

The agency plans to give an easement of the borderland to the Texas Facilities Commission to start border wall construction in December.

“It’s been a long fight to get here, to be able to acquire this piece of property to get this wall built,” she said.

As of the summer, Texas has built about 34 miles of state-funded border wall at a cost of about $25 million per mile, according to an investigation by the Texas Tribune.

Border Report asked the Texas Facilities Commission, which oversees state border wall projects, how much this new section will cost, but the agency declined to comment.

The newly purchased parcel of land and ranch are just west of the small town of La Grulla and the current section of the Texas-funded border wall, which was the first to be built in the state and the first state to build a border wall in the nation.

Grass and weeds already are growing at the base of the 1.7-mile segment, which will not abut the new section but will be within a couple of miles, agency officials tell Border Report.

Drone footage of the GLO land show fields of corn and sorghum, cotton and onion crops, which Buckingham says the agency plans to continue farming and should not be affected by the border wall construction.

She said the General Land Office last week also acquired land in West Texas, in Brewster County, near the city of Marathon “with a small segment on the river” where the agency also plans to give the easement to the state to build border wall.

Buckingham says the state is building the wall because the Biden administration isn’t defending the Texas border.

“Texas and this entire administration has been standing in the gap left by the federal government,” she said.

Texas hospitals collecting citizenship data after executive order

As of Friday, Texas hospitals are required to collect information regarding patients who are not legally in the country as part of an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott signed the order in August in an effort to collect data on the costs of caring for undocumented patients, claiming Texas “absorbs a large percentage of the costs associated with medical care for individuals who are not lawfully in the United States.”

The order also directs hospitals to inform patients that their response “will not affect patient care.”

Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation at 17% — more than double the national average. Five million Texans have no insurance, the Texas Hospital Association reported. Last year, hospitals provided more than $8 billion in “charity care” for uninsured people, with more than $3 billion not reimbursed.

Most uninsured Texans are citizens, however. While 1.6 million undocumented immigrants live in Texas, they go to the hospital at lower rates than U.S. citizens and make up a minority of the uninsured cost burden on state hospitals, the Texas Tribune reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas worries the order will discourage undocumented Texans from seeking necessary medical care. They stress that patients do not need to answer the question, and cannot be denied care no matter their answer.

“This order should not impact anybody’s access to care — period,” senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas David Donatti said. “Whether you are native-born, a U.S. citizen, an immigrant, whatever your status should be, you should be able to access the healthcare that you need and the facility should not have the ability to block you from receiving that kind of care. That is crystal clear as a matter of federal law.”

Donatti said the ACLU is exploring possible legal action against the Governor’s order.

The Texas Hospital Association also reassures patients that the new rule will not impact healthcare access.

“The bottom line for patients is that this doesn’t change hospital care. Texas hospitals continue to be a safe place for needed care,” Texas Hospital Association spokesperson Carrie Williams told Nexstar. “On the particulars of implementation, all hospitals are different. Hospitals across the state are working on the backend to determine how to comply with the reporting guidance and meet the state’s deadlines.”

The order applies only to hospitals enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Those facilities are required to report their data to the Health and Human Services Commission each quarter, with the first submission due March 1, 2025.

ER crash family meets councilmember pushing for change

It was an emotional embrace months in the making.

“Hi, can I give you a hug?” Austin City Councilmember Mackenzie Kelly asked, before wrapping her arms around Levi and Nadia Bernard. “It’s so good to meet you.”

“It’s so good to meet you, too,” Nadia Bernard said, with tears in her eyes.

Eight months after a drunk driver drove through the lobby of an Austin hospital, a family badly hurt that day heard first-hand how their story could soon save lives.

KXAN connected Kelly with Nadia and Levi Bernard after they all said they wanted to thank each other. On Thursday they met inside the same City Hall room where Kelly first watched their story in May and asked staff to “initiate an ordinance change.”

Levi Bernard, left, Austin City Councilmember Mackenzie Kelly, center, and Nadia Bernard, right, pose with a signed copy of Kelly’s resolution asking for crash-rated bollards at new hospitals. (KXAN Photo/Matt Grant)

That ordinance will now be voted on in December. If passed, it will require crash-rated security bollards at new city hospitals, stand-alone emergency rooms and urgent care clinics. Existing hospitals would be required to install them if they apply for a new permit.

KXAN reached out to Kelly’s District 6 election opponent, Krista Laine, for comment. We asked her thoughts on the bollards ordinance but was told her campaign “will not be commenting on this.”

Levi said he was “flabbergasted” at how quickly their story has inspired change.

“Typically, the process can be months, but I wanted to make sure this was a priority,” Kelly said. “It was within days from watching KXAN’s investigation that I had researched and fully drafted something.”

That resolution was presented to the family and their attorney as a signed gift.

“This is amazing,” Nadia said. “I’m going to put it on my wall.”

On Feb. 13, the Bernards were in the lobby of St. David’s North Austin Medical Center with their two toddlers when a vehicle crashed into them, killing the driver and injuring five people total. Their youngest, Sunny, went through the car’s windshield. Surveillance video, obtained through a public records request, shows the chaotic scene as Levi frantically searched for their son.

“So, how are your kids doing?” Kelly asked.

“They’re OK. They’re OK. We’re dealing with a lot of things but overall we’re —” Nadia said before pausing.

“Moving in the right direction,” Levi finished.

“Persisting?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah,” Nadia replied. “Exactly.”

Austin City Councilmember Mackenzie Kelly, left, signs a copy of her bollard resolution for Levi and Nadia Bernard. (KXAN Photo/Matt Grant)

Kelly told the family she “can’t imagine … the trauma” they experienced that day. That trauma has now been transformed into a potential new city policy that “will forever be in the history of the city.”

“That’s something that I feel is a good legacy,” Kelly said.

“When we heard that you were on top of it and you’re like right at it, it felt like we had a voice, you know?” Nadia said. “Like, someone who doesn’t know us but cared for us … I thank you for that, really.”

“Thank you for those kind words,” Kelly replied.

The family’s recovery has been moving “one day at a time.” Nadia no longer needs a wheelchair and now walks with the help of a cane.

“Psychologically, we’re still pretty messed up,” Levi said. “And, we still have an array of physical issues. But, we’re better off than we were yesterday.”

“It’s still kind of tough to accept this reality,” Nadia said.

photos showing no bollards near ER, car crashed into ER and bollards added
After a car crashed into St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, it added security barriers near the ER entrance (Photos courtesy Howry, Breen & Herman; Diane Warmoth)

A KXAN investigation found the type of crash that injured the Bernard family is not uncommon, with more than 300 incidents involving medical centers across the U.S. in the past decade. It turns out safety devices crash-tested to save lives are not required on a local, state or federal level — even at critical infrastructure, like hospitals where entrances often include pedestrian and vehicle traffic.

In May, the family filed a $1 million lawsuit accusing St. David’s NAMC of “gross negligence” for not having bollards. A dozen were installed after KXAN started asking questions. St. David’s would not comment on the lawsuit. In court records, it pointed to cases where a lack of safety bollards at commercial buildings were found to not constitute an “unreasonably dangerous condition.”

“We’re in the fact-gathering stage,” said the Bernards’ attorney, Sean Breen. “And, I can tell you, there are no good answers for why this happened. It should have never happened.”

Their goal now is to prevent this from happening again. The Bernards’ story is already sparking a General Services Administration review of federal facilities in the Southwestern U.S. and State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, is considering a potential statewide bollard bill, which Kelly supports.

Kelly said she already reached out to West’s office and offered to be a resource.

“It’s important we do this on a broader scale,” she said. “So that the impact is greater.”

“We really appreciate all her work,” Nadia told KXAN after their meeting. “And your work, too, Matt, thank you.”