Pregnant teen died trying to get help in three trips to Texas emergency room

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A health policy professor believes Republican states' strict abortion laws have turned pregnant women into “untouchables” – and led to their deaths.

Nevaeh Crain was 18 years old when she died on October 29, 2023. She was pregnant at the time and was suffering from fever, vomiting, weakness and severe abdominal pain.

Within 12 hours, Crain – a Texas resident – had visited two hospital emergency rooms and was prevented from receiving life-saving treatment on both occasions, according to a report ProPublica.

During her first visit, doctors diagnosed her with strep throat but did not treat her abdominal pain. A doctor at a second hospital confirmed she was suffering from sepsis, a potentially fatal reaction to an infection. Doctors told her that the six-month-old fetus she was carrying had a heartbeat and released Crain from the hospital.

She went to a third hospital, where an obstetrician insisted on performing two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” according to a nurse's note. After the ultrasound scans, she was finally taken to the intensive care unit.

It was too late; By the time she received appropriate treatment, Crain's blood pressure had dropped and her lips had become “blue and dull,” according to a nurse's report.

Her organs failed and she died at 18.

Candace Fails, Crain's mother, said ProPublica that she can't understand why doctors have refused to treat her daughter's situation as an emergency, but Sara Rosenbaum, professor emeritus of police health and law at George Washington University, has a theory.

She was a pregnant woman in a Republican state with strict abortion laws.

“Pregnant women have essentially become untouchables,” she said ProPublica.

In Gov. Greg Abbott's state of Texas, abortion bans threaten medical professionals with prison time if they perform medical procedures that stop the fetus' heartbeat. While the law allows exceptions for conditions that threaten to lie, doctors explained ProPublica that the unclear legal framework on the issue has distorted the way their colleagues treat pregnant women.

They say, for example, that pregnant women — like Crain's — are being sent from hospital to hospital because health care providers are unwilling to offer treatments that could put them in the crosshairs of a conservative prosecutor, according to doctors who spoke to the outlet.

They described wasting treatment time debating the merits of treatment and creating complete documentation out of fear of what might happen to them if they became the subject of criminal charges.

This results in pregnant women no longer being able to trust the advice they receive from healthcare providers.

“Am I going to be sent home because I’m feeling really good? “Dr. Jodi Abbott, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said ProPublica. “Or am I going to be sent home because they're afraid that the solution to my pregnancy is to terminate the pregnancy, and they're not allowed to do that?”

While federal law prohibits emergency physicians from withholding life-saving treatment, Texas has fought hard to change the interpretation of its law. Greg Abbott's Texas has warned doctors that state law supersedes the Biden administration's guidance on federal law.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in 2022, arguing that federal guidelines “force hospitals and doctors to commit crimes” and that it was an “attempt to convert every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic using federal law.” . .”

The lawsuit was allowed as it played out in federal courts overseen by Donald Trump-nominated judges until U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix — also a Trump appointee — sided with Paxton.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed the ruling. The Biden administration has appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Violations of state law can result in health care providers being punished with a maximum prison sentence of 99 years.

This threat of life-destructive consequences has pushed doctors to walk on eggshells and waste valuable time treating a patient, critics say. Case in point: The nurse who ordered two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal death” before Crain was transferred to the intensive care unit.

“This is how these restrictions kill women,” Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director for the Department of Health and Human Services, told the outlet. “It’s never just a decision, it’s never just a doctor, it’s never just a nurse.”

Health care providers at Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas and Christus Southeast Texas St Elizabeth, the facilities where Crain was treated, did not respond to ProPublica's requests for comment.

The Independent has asked the providers for a statement.

ProPublica compiled Crain's medical records and asked a group of doctors to review the information. All doctors who reviewed Crain's information said she was never allowed to leave the hospital after her first hospital visit.

“She should have never left, never left,” Elise Boos, a Tennessee gynecologist, said after reviewing the information.