It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

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.

      • @newenlightened@lemmy.world
        1•2 days ago

        we been doing that for years. hasn’t changed much. what’s the next step?

        EDIT: protests are 20th century passe’ and only affect change if they become violent (see george floyd), petitions are almost a complete waste of time, your congressman definitely isn’t listening to you, i still believe voting is effective but not enough (and may soon be nerfed into uselessness)

        • @Syrc@lemmy.world
          2•2 days ago

          only affect change if they become violent (see george floyd)

          Did those even change anything, actually? I just remember some statues being torn down and the police just doing their business as usual. They also need to be aimed at the correct targets for them to be effective.

          • @newenlightened@lemmy.world
            2•2 days ago

            i don’t think we’d have mandatory body cams or a real push for reform without them. if it had just been peaceful protests, i think america would have shrugged it off like they do every other protest. if protests don’t cause disruption, they usually don’t have any effect. on the other hand, it could be argued that the protests have galvanized another portion of americans into being completely opposed to reform.

            but of course, that portion of america is the problem and i think they deserve more disruption.