I had an ectopic pregnancy and was living in San Antonio Texas in spring 2020, a year before HB8 was passed. Both my well woman midwife and my gynecologist, both whom I'd trusted for years with well women exams, endometriosis surgery and the birth of my then 2 year old-- were in South Austin. We'd just recently relocated and decided we preferred the two hour drive over finding a new healthcare provider. We didn't have insurance, were underemployed, and paid out of pocket anyway. Governor Abbott had just signed a ban on "nonessential surgeries" by Executive Order GA-09, which resulted in a functional ban on abortion.
Guess who had to drive 2 hours, 6 times in 2 months to take care of an nonviable pregnancy? A pregnancy that I would not have even known was nonviable without the D&C (read: abortion procedure) that ruled out what we initially thought was a molar pregnancy. The first shot of methotrexate didn't work. The second did, and every hour of every day between appointments, I hoped that the ectopic pregnancy would resolve itself. I wanted to spare my family the stress and the cost of treatment. I wanted to enjoy my toddler and grieve the aftermath of a failed potential and also feel the relief of a terminated pregnancy I had felt ambivalent about.
I am so lucky to be alive, and I am lucky to have had a Dr and a hospital and a partner who was willing to take the risk of breaking the law for my life. As dramatic as it seems now, I was so thankful and felt so lucky every time we returned home without having been pulled over. I worried every time, completely irrationally, that somehow in someway law enforcement might know. It was Covid, it was a weird time. I'm not sorry for my hypervigilance.
I know that it's election time and that people are using this story to tell people to go out and vote. I'm not going to do that. People need to do what feels right to them and their values. I've voted every year I've been eligible since I turned 18. I lived in Texas most of those years except two presidential elections when I voted by mail order ballot. I'm 43 now and though I will never give up on reproductive justice, I did give up on the U.S and moved abroad. I know it's not something everybody can do, nor did we move to a country with more reproductive justice. We moved where we were allowed to, it was a horizontal relocation.
What I did do was take away a valuable lesson. At the end of the day, it isn't the people who vote who change the world. It's the ones willing to disobey.
When you look at the states with exemplary, though not perfect, rights and policies regarding reproductive justice--you're looking at states with law and policymakers who have done the work to understand that radical change requires radical courage and radical action.
Project 2025 will continue to unfold in states like Texas that have been gerrymandered to democratic death-- regardless of who wins the presidency. The same way HB8 prevented Josseli Barnica from getting the care she needed, before Roe was overturned. The same way Greg Abbott's ban almost prevented me from getting the care I needed a year before that. I could continue all the way back to 11 years ago when half the clinics in Texas were shut down because of 2013's HB2. I want to remind everyone that even when The Supreme Court reversed that decision-- the clinics did not return.
Abortion access ended then for most Texans, despite the ERA being ratified there in 1972. There is no reproductive justice there, there is no democracy there and there hasn't been for some time. The same can be said for 58% of us in the US that live in states with abortion restrictions. That's 48 million women, transmen and enbies without proper healthcare. Reproductive health care restrictions harm reproductive autonomy for every body.
If you feel that voting is going to change this, then please go out and vote. Feel good about it and keep your civic spirit alive. Local elections matter, school boards matter, city council meetings matter. Volunteering matters. Keep going.
If you have watched this get worse every year of your life, or maybe you watched it get better in your life and then worse, and you are giving up on voting-- then don't let anybody make you feel shitty about it. You have fought this fight, in your own way. If you have a womb, or you ever did. If you have been dragged down by discriminate policy. You have survived this. You are worthy and you are not less than. And you have a right to complain about an electoral system that so disgusts and distresses you that you refuse to participate in it.
Nobody asks their friend who drove them to the clinic if they voted. Nobody asks their their friend/acquaintance/family member/stranger connection who provided them with safe abortion care if they voted. Nobody asks their healthcare provider who helped terminate their pregnancy, provide prenatal care, and/or helped them give birth if they voted.
So please, keep reading this blog and keep sharing it. Read the Guttmacher Institute's reports. Educate yourself about your body, and share what you learn with anybody who will listen.
And also please, if you're reading this and you're in the thick of telling people to vote and using stories like this to motivate, please stop. This story is a travesty, not a motivation, and in states like Texas it is not uncommon. My vote didn't save her and neither did yours. Building community does not mean using every 4 years as a moral grandstanding against your fellow loved ones who see the world differently and have different lifetime experiences.
Nobody who knows me could say that I haven't been in this fight. And I'm not fucking voting. But if you need access to a safe abortion, guess who's not going to let the law decide whether you have it. Don't let the law decide what's best for you, your body and your life. Everybody deserves to feel safe in knowing that a community has their back, whether they voted or not.
These anti abortion people that want to blame women for their plight and say the laws allow for lifesaving care are just trying to deflect blame and get the attention off them, because they KNOW they're responsible. Their actions are coming home to roost, people are repelled and disgusted (rightly so). They deserve all the bad press and blowback, in spades.
What is also really vile? Attempting to blame doctors and induce patients to sue them for malpractice! This isn't malpractice-it's fucked up law. Period. The State of Texas tried this and I've heard it happening in other states.
We MUST keep talking about this, objecting loudly, and fighting back. Their lack of care is immaterial, we know they are ghouls, and we will continue to remind them of the consequences.
It should be clear to anyone with a brain that a woman having a miscarriage before fetal viability should be helped immediately because the fetus WILL die. It makes no logical sense to wait for the fetus to actually die, or to wait until the woman’s life and/or organs are in danger! Just like we don’t prevent men from getting treatment for testicular cancer because it will ‘murder’ their sperm & a potential lives…
In fact a fetus is but a potential life. Anything can happen between conception and birth. And it often does. Many women have miscarriages in the first trimester. A friend’s DIL lost her first baby last week because she had a sudden onset of preeclampsia at 21 weeks. She lost the baby, she nearly died, is still sick and nobody knows if she’ll be able to try again. An absolute tragedy not related to abortion bans but proving that women are risking their lives in pregnancy without some ignorant bigot making it worse.
Also, bodily autonomy is a human right. If the pro life faction really believe in saving lives, why are they not fighting for the government to start a database of everybody in the country for kidney donation, bone marrow donation and part liver donation? All these things can be donated from a living person, to save the lives of people who are slowly dying in pain and need help. We know why. It’s not about saving lives; it’s about controlling women. It may also be about some screwed up religious judgment about sex and proving paternity of ‘heirs’ (like does anyone really care; if so do a DNA test🙄).
Women’s bodies have been controlled since the beginning of time. Women know it’s their baby cos they’re there for conception and birth. Men not so much. And they can’t fucking stand it can they? Which is why women who have active sex lives are demonized; they’re called sluts, whores, the village bike, the martini girl etc, and men are studs cos they have a right to spread their seed or some such nonsense. Give me a break.
Women give up so much to have children, their careers, their identity, their bodies and they should be revered and protected not treated like a disposable replaceable brainless walking womb.
Please, doctors everywhere, treat your patients. They can’t sue everyone…
If Trump wins, we’re all screwed (all rights will be forfeited). If Harris wins but doesn’t have a Senate and House majority, pregnant women will still be screwed. We need to send a message that the American experiment is alive and kicking and we will not go quietly into the night, wait that’s from ‘Independence Day’… we are spitting mad, we care about all persons who can get pregnant and we are not going back to the dark ages. We have the fucking technology to saves lives, lives who already have dreams, aspirations, partners, families, children and rights FFS!
Sorry, I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but man this sucks. Are we really gonna be monitoring every person born female’s mental cycle? As if periods don’t suck enough. As an aside, in some Jewish sects, women are ‘unclean’ on their period and need a ritual bath to cleanse themselves when their period ends. But if they’re not sure it’s finished yet, they have to give their underwear to the Rabbi for inspection so he can rule on the end of their menses. How messed up is that? Really, what kind of weirdo inspects women’s knickers on a regular basis? Talk about controlling women’s bodies…
Anyway, sorry about the rant, love Jessica and all you do, stay safe.
I love your rant, every damned word of it; & you won’t be preaching just to this choir, because I am going to share your comment here on Substack, on FB, & Threads & will also be emailing it to my younger sister. She voted for DJT specifically because he promised to appoint those justices to overturn Roe!! 🤬 so your comment may travel far. 😊💙
The doctors treating Barnica “absolutely didn’t do the right thing,” she said. But she understood why they would have felt “totally stuck,” especially if they worked at a hospital that hadn’t promised to defend them.
Even three years after Barnica’s death, HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that treated Barnica, will not disclose whether it has a policy on how to treat miscarriages.
Some HCA shareholders have asked the company to prepare a report on the risks to the company related to the bans in states that restrict abortion, so patients would understand what services they could expect and doctors would know under what circumstances they would be protected. But the board of directors opposed the proposal, partly because it would create an “unnecessary expense and burdens with limited benefits to our stockholders.” The proposal was supported by 8% of shareholders who voted.
The company’s decision to abstain has repercussions far beyond Texas; the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain has said it delivers more babies than any other health care provider in America, and 70% of its hospitals are in states where abortion is restricted.
Abortion bans and how the laws are written bad enough, but you have for profit hospitals (HCA etc) who wont take a stand to back their physicians when they have to make a life or death decision. (if the doctor is willing to take that risk). The hospital administrators are also part of the problem.
I read somewhere ( I don't recall if it was here at AED) or another news article but there was mentioned a couple hospitals in Texas that will take cases such as this. The names were not disclosed. I wish I could remember more details regarding this issue. I remember being surprised and also confused. Clearly if there is are a couple of facilities it is on the down low.
Right! I was in corporate sales for 30 yrs. We were always reminded about our duty to the shareholders. A persons life is treated like any other commodity. Women and people are entitled to be treated with dignity and not a number and $$.
They need to be SUED into the next century and reported to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services demanding that the facility be inspected and reviewed.
This is valuable insight. Thanks for sharing it. I left a reply to another comment about providers before I got to this one, and I'd say the same thing: unfortunately, in this country, we can't always assume the institutions providing care have their patients' best interests at heart (and really we can just as often assume they don't :(
I worked for HCA and the first I heard of the (P)Rick Scott welfare fraud suit, was in the cafeteria while fetching lunch. It was on CNN. We had recently changed our name and I then figured out why. My point being that fuckery is baked in to the institution.
Anyone who can look at the photo of Josseli Barnica and her baby daughter without crying doesn’t have a heart. But (and I could be mistaken here) my understanding of SB8 pre-Dobbs is that it allowed citizens to sue each other for a $10,000 bounty, but did not contain draconian penalties for health care providers/institutions (like hospitals). If a medical care provider/institution feels his/her/its hands are tied because of the enormous risk of criminal prosecution ending in decades to life in prison and career suicide in the form of loss of license, these terrible consequences for women cannot be said to be the fault of doctors/medical facilities. But if there were no laws pre-Dobbs mandating these draconian penalties, or any penalties other than maybe the forfeiture of a $10,000 bounty, then the fault really does lie with the doctors/health care providers/medical institutions.
It’s not “just $10,000” Under SB 8. You pay your lawyer . Then you pay the plaintiffs legal fees if they win. We’re already talking more like $500,000. For each instance in which you did the right thing and provided medical care when you should instead of rolling the dice on some poor woman’s life. You have violated the law, meaning the Texas medical board can revoke your medical license to practice medicine so you lose your livelihood. Plus since 2022, you can go to prison for life. If you’re the doctor what would you do.
I wouldn’t say the fault lies with them but I reiterate my stance on this as someone who has studied the history of civil rights, the women’s movement both suffrage and the second wave. Where are the courageous fighting within this system? I don’t expect all doctors to risk jail time to treat patients but I do think more would risk it when someone’s actual life was in their hands. And maybe that’s already happening and we don’t know about it. But when I think of the sacrifices that those who fought for dignity and human rights in the past, I wonder why aren’t more doctors standing up?
I know the answer and it makes me nauseous. Things aren’t bad enough yet. As bad as they are, until more people realize they are sue, attest, dehumanize and are going to kill us anyway, so we might as well go out swinging, we are still pawns in their game. Until the actual reality sets in about what they are complicit in, I don’t think we will see that type of defiance. I hope and pray that isn’t the cost, but I fear it will be.
The best way for the actual reality to set in - with everyone, about everything that's going on in this country - is for the Republicans to win this election, and what worries me most is what if that's the _only_ way?
I wonder if the re-emergence of septic wards for women will be needed to shock some decency into our society.
I remember watching a documentary about Jane, the network that helped women get abortions pre-Roe. A doctor interview remarked about these wards, where women who suffered botched abortions were treated and died, if the sepsis was too far along.
Apparently it's going to take many, many deaths to get people's attention...
Good point. While we don't seek to blame health care providers, we also in this country unfortunately cannot assume providers always have their patients' best interests at heart. Between for profit and religious institutions, there are a lot of bad eggs out there, and they can't be let off the hook either.
The religious conviction that a woman's pregnancy is an infant, or a child and in some sense, actually superior to that of a child, even more precious and deserving of protection than even an infant is corrupting our society. It's as if we were all obliged to suffer to advance the belief that the sun and all the planets rotated around the earth as the center of the solar system. Or that we were all created by the hand of a Creator instead of being the product of evolution. No corner of human behavior or society in the world is safe from the sadistic fingers of depraved and absurd religious belief.
My son away in college: he is hiking through a nature preserve to hoof it to a post office in time to overnight me his absentee ballot application so I can be his surrogate and go get him his ballot to overnight back, in time, to vote for Kamala. Proud mama. My daughter already voted for her. All of her college mates did as well. She is in Ithaca, NY -- very liberal area. But wow. Kids are motivated.
My son is also at school and this is his first presidential election. We are in Massachusetts so the president part will not have a direct impact but numbers matter and we also have some pretty important ballot questions. I have nagged him at least 5 times about getting his mail in ballot and making sure it’s post marked on time. He has sent me pics of the ballot arriving and assure me he’s on it. The kids are definitely motivated. I do think youth numbers are going to be high. These kids are more politically aware than I was at that age.
Excellent article Jessica. This all calls to mind the fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition in which sinners were burned at the stake. Here in the Unites States, those, whom our right-wing fanatics label as sinners, will just be allowed to die on their own, either in a hospital, at home, in their cars. or in prison for having violated the anti-abortion laws, such as a woman who sought an abortion after she was savagely raped by a repeat offender. We used to be able to look to our highest Court to vindicate our rights, but not only are they co-conspirators in suppressing them, they are openly and notoriously enriching themselves with lavish payments, gifts, vacations and other such benefits from stakeholders and de facto lobbyists on issues before them. They obviously must have theorized that our founding fathers wanted them to accept these pay-offs. The bottom line is that our country has become sick, and as the saying goes, " A fish stinks from the head down." And the last thing our country needs is for a rotted fish, which was thrown out of the bucket, to be tossed back in.
I have lit a candle. It's outrageous. Outrageous! These politicians have no business meddling where they don't belong! What a beautiful woman and what a preventable tragedy. Disgusting.
How many more is right? She died in 2021. How many more have died since?
Many more have died. It is outrageous that a state the size of Texas, with the wealth that Texas has at it’s disposal, would take 3 YEARS to review a maternal death!!!
As Jessica made plain in her appearance on MSNBC tonight, & in this article; they KNEW that women & girls would die!! They knew & they made plans to deal with the blowback by blaming the Drs, the hospital lawyers, & us - the pro choice people.
Texas put Skop on that maternal mortality review board for the express purpose of trying to cover up the number of deaths related to abortion bans. I hate those people, I despise them, they are evil. I’m going to go donate some more $$ to Colin Allred, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Lucas Kunce, Dan Osborn, & several other Democrats running for House & Senate. Harris must win, but she also must have a Congress to be able to get anything done.
After reading this post I began thinking about thr columnists praising women who would refuse chemo or radiation, or a termination. You know what sick f*cks like that want to do? Here's my hypothesis: a young woman, already a mother, has cancer or a life-threatening pregnancy. She forges treatment or is denied treatment and dies. Forced birth zealots approach thr grieving father and suggest that, to help him, that THEY take the children, just til he gets ba k on his feet, you know, and he never gets them back, because they are adopted by forced birth zealots.
Great info. Seems like the group lining up the most in PA and NC is older white women who are married and have some decent income. Don't know what to make of that. I think Harris is winning only 45% of white women in general , in polls mind you. Maybe these are women who remember life before Roe and are like 'Nope. Not again."
Or they could be like the 70-year-old white women who hang at the bar in our lovely restaurant down the road wearing "Trump girl" shirts and making sure Fox is on the TV.
My mom’s fight for reproductive freedom saved me from this fate. Now it’s my turn.
https://substack.com/@alhegy/note/c-75100648?r=5xue9&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I had an ectopic pregnancy and was living in San Antonio Texas in spring 2020, a year before HB8 was passed. Both my well woman midwife and my gynecologist, both whom I'd trusted for years with well women exams, endometriosis surgery and the birth of my then 2 year old-- were in South Austin. We'd just recently relocated and decided we preferred the two hour drive over finding a new healthcare provider. We didn't have insurance, were underemployed, and paid out of pocket anyway. Governor Abbott had just signed a ban on "nonessential surgeries" by Executive Order GA-09, which resulted in a functional ban on abortion.
Guess who had to drive 2 hours, 6 times in 2 months to take care of an nonviable pregnancy? A pregnancy that I would not have even known was nonviable without the D&C (read: abortion procedure) that ruled out what we initially thought was a molar pregnancy. The first shot of methotrexate didn't work. The second did, and every hour of every day between appointments, I hoped that the ectopic pregnancy would resolve itself. I wanted to spare my family the stress and the cost of treatment. I wanted to enjoy my toddler and grieve the aftermath of a failed potential and also feel the relief of a terminated pregnancy I had felt ambivalent about.
I am so lucky to be alive, and I am lucky to have had a Dr and a hospital and a partner who was willing to take the risk of breaking the law for my life. As dramatic as it seems now, I was so thankful and felt so lucky every time we returned home without having been pulled over. I worried every time, completely irrationally, that somehow in someway law enforcement might know. It was Covid, it was a weird time. I'm not sorry for my hypervigilance.
I know that it's election time and that people are using this story to tell people to go out and vote. I'm not going to do that. People need to do what feels right to them and their values. I've voted every year I've been eligible since I turned 18. I lived in Texas most of those years except two presidential elections when I voted by mail order ballot. I'm 43 now and though I will never give up on reproductive justice, I did give up on the U.S and moved abroad. I know it's not something everybody can do, nor did we move to a country with more reproductive justice. We moved where we were allowed to, it was a horizontal relocation.
What I did do was take away a valuable lesson. At the end of the day, it isn't the people who vote who change the world. It's the ones willing to disobey.
When you look at the states with exemplary, though not perfect, rights and policies regarding reproductive justice--you're looking at states with law and policymakers who have done the work to understand that radical change requires radical courage and radical action.
Project 2025 will continue to unfold in states like Texas that have been gerrymandered to democratic death-- regardless of who wins the presidency. The same way HB8 prevented Josseli Barnica from getting the care she needed, before Roe was overturned. The same way Greg Abbott's ban almost prevented me from getting the care I needed a year before that. I could continue all the way back to 11 years ago when half the clinics in Texas were shut down because of 2013's HB2. I want to remind everyone that even when The Supreme Court reversed that decision-- the clinics did not return.
Abortion access ended then for most Texans, despite the ERA being ratified there in 1972. There is no reproductive justice there, there is no democracy there and there hasn't been for some time. The same can be said for 58% of us in the US that live in states with abortion restrictions. That's 48 million women, transmen and enbies without proper healthcare. Reproductive health care restrictions harm reproductive autonomy for every body.
If you feel that voting is going to change this, then please go out and vote. Feel good about it and keep your civic spirit alive. Local elections matter, school boards matter, city council meetings matter. Volunteering matters. Keep going.
If you have watched this get worse every year of your life, or maybe you watched it get better in your life and then worse, and you are giving up on voting-- then don't let anybody make you feel shitty about it. You have fought this fight, in your own way. If you have a womb, or you ever did. If you have been dragged down by discriminate policy. You have survived this. You are worthy and you are not less than. And you have a right to complain about an electoral system that so disgusts and distresses you that you refuse to participate in it.
Nobody asks their friend who drove them to the clinic if they voted. Nobody asks their their friend/acquaintance/family member/stranger connection who provided them with safe abortion care if they voted. Nobody asks their healthcare provider who helped terminate their pregnancy, provide prenatal care, and/or helped them give birth if they voted.
So please, keep reading this blog and keep sharing it. Read the Guttmacher Institute's reports. Educate yourself about your body, and share what you learn with anybody who will listen.
And also please, if you're reading this and you're in the thick of telling people to vote and using stories like this to motivate, please stop. This story is a travesty, not a motivation, and in states like Texas it is not uncommon. My vote didn't save her and neither did yours. Building community does not mean using every 4 years as a moral grandstanding against your fellow loved ones who see the world differently and have different lifetime experiences.
Nobody who knows me could say that I haven't been in this fight. And I'm not fucking voting. But if you need access to a safe abortion, guess who's not going to let the law decide whether you have it. Don't let the law decide what's best for you, your body and your life. Everybody deserves to feel safe in knowing that a community has their back, whether they voted or not.
Powerful, tear-jerking, and further motivation to VOTE !
Individuals MUST have the FREEDOM to decide about their own body and health.
I choked when I read this on Barnica’s autopsy report:
“Manner of Death: Natural”. In 2024, this was not a “Natural” death. It was murder.
I’ve seen your book quoted twice today regarding freedom, and I am so stoked. Jessica, this is huge. Your book is so important.
These anti abortion people that want to blame women for their plight and say the laws allow for lifesaving care are just trying to deflect blame and get the attention off them, because they KNOW they're responsible. Their actions are coming home to roost, people are repelled and disgusted (rightly so). They deserve all the bad press and blowback, in spades.
What is also really vile? Attempting to blame doctors and induce patients to sue them for malpractice! This isn't malpractice-it's fucked up law. Period. The State of Texas tried this and I've heard it happening in other states.
We MUST keep talking about this, objecting loudly, and fighting back. Their lack of care is immaterial, we know they are ghouls, and we will continue to remind them of the consequences.
I’m excited to see you coming up on MSNBC after this commercial break!!
It should be clear to anyone with a brain that a woman having a miscarriage before fetal viability should be helped immediately because the fetus WILL die. It makes no logical sense to wait for the fetus to actually die, or to wait until the woman’s life and/or organs are in danger! Just like we don’t prevent men from getting treatment for testicular cancer because it will ‘murder’ their sperm & a potential lives…
In fact a fetus is but a potential life. Anything can happen between conception and birth. And it often does. Many women have miscarriages in the first trimester. A friend’s DIL lost her first baby last week because she had a sudden onset of preeclampsia at 21 weeks. She lost the baby, she nearly died, is still sick and nobody knows if she’ll be able to try again. An absolute tragedy not related to abortion bans but proving that women are risking their lives in pregnancy without some ignorant bigot making it worse.
Also, bodily autonomy is a human right. If the pro life faction really believe in saving lives, why are they not fighting for the government to start a database of everybody in the country for kidney donation, bone marrow donation and part liver donation? All these things can be donated from a living person, to save the lives of people who are slowly dying in pain and need help. We know why. It’s not about saving lives; it’s about controlling women. It may also be about some screwed up religious judgment about sex and proving paternity of ‘heirs’ (like does anyone really care; if so do a DNA test🙄).
Women’s bodies have been controlled since the beginning of time. Women know it’s their baby cos they’re there for conception and birth. Men not so much. And they can’t fucking stand it can they? Which is why women who have active sex lives are demonized; they’re called sluts, whores, the village bike, the martini girl etc, and men are studs cos they have a right to spread their seed or some such nonsense. Give me a break.
Women give up so much to have children, their careers, their identity, their bodies and they should be revered and protected not treated like a disposable replaceable brainless walking womb.
Please, doctors everywhere, treat your patients. They can’t sue everyone…
If Trump wins, we’re all screwed (all rights will be forfeited). If Harris wins but doesn’t have a Senate and House majority, pregnant women will still be screwed. We need to send a message that the American experiment is alive and kicking and we will not go quietly into the night, wait that’s from ‘Independence Day’… we are spitting mad, we care about all persons who can get pregnant and we are not going back to the dark ages. We have the fucking technology to saves lives, lives who already have dreams, aspirations, partners, families, children and rights FFS!
Sorry, I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but man this sucks. Are we really gonna be monitoring every person born female’s mental cycle? As if periods don’t suck enough. As an aside, in some Jewish sects, women are ‘unclean’ on their period and need a ritual bath to cleanse themselves when their period ends. But if they’re not sure it’s finished yet, they have to give their underwear to the Rabbi for inspection so he can rule on the end of their menses. How messed up is that? Really, what kind of weirdo inspects women’s knickers on a regular basis? Talk about controlling women’s bodies…
Anyway, sorry about the rant, love Jessica and all you do, stay safe.
You're damn right we are spitting mad! Very well put!
I bet men would scream bloody murder if their bodies were policed/monitored even a little, let alone all of this.
I love your rant, every damned word of it; & you won’t be preaching just to this choir, because I am going to share your comment here on Substack, on FB, & Threads & will also be emailing it to my younger sister. She voted for DJT specifically because he promised to appoint those justices to overturn Roe!! 🤬 so your comment may travel far. 😊💙
Several parts of the Tribune article struck me:
The doctors treating Barnica “absolutely didn’t do the right thing,” she said. But she understood why they would have felt “totally stuck,” especially if they worked at a hospital that hadn’t promised to defend them.
Even three years after Barnica’s death, HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that treated Barnica, will not disclose whether it has a policy on how to treat miscarriages.
Some HCA shareholders have asked the company to prepare a report on the risks to the company related to the bans in states that restrict abortion, so patients would understand what services they could expect and doctors would know under what circumstances they would be protected. But the board of directors opposed the proposal, partly because it would create an “unnecessary expense and burdens with limited benefits to our stockholders.” The proposal was supported by 8% of shareholders who voted.
The company’s decision to abstain has repercussions far beyond Texas; the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain has said it delivers more babies than any other health care provider in America, and 70% of its hospitals are in states where abortion is restricted.
Abortion bans and how the laws are written bad enough, but you have for profit hospitals (HCA etc) who wont take a stand to back their physicians when they have to make a life or death decision. (if the doctor is willing to take that risk). The hospital administrators are also part of the problem.
I read somewhere ( I don't recall if it was here at AED) or another news article but there was mentioned a couple hospitals in Texas that will take cases such as this. The names were not disclosed. I wish I could remember more details regarding this issue. I remember being surprised and also confused. Clearly if there is are a couple of facilities it is on the down low.
That's all I got today. sigh...
Well we mustn't ever inconvenience the shareholders...
Right! I was in corporate sales for 30 yrs. We were always reminded about our duty to the shareholders. A persons life is treated like any other commodity. Women and people are entitled to be treated with dignity and not a number and $$.
Hospitals are totally fine with collateral damage......us dying.
They need to be SUED into the next century and reported to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services demanding that the facility be inspected and reviewed.
This is valuable insight. Thanks for sharing it. I left a reply to another comment about providers before I got to this one, and I'd say the same thing: unfortunately, in this country, we can't always assume the institutions providing care have their patients' best interests at heart (and really we can just as often assume they don't :(
Agreed. Advocating for yourself is always priority. Even with doctor visits.
Agreed. They have deep pockets. And during the Kate Cox case our DA Paxton threatened the hospitals. Fuckery indeed.
I worked for HCA and the first I heard of the (P)Rick Scott welfare fraud suit, was in the cafeteria while fetching lunch. It was on CNN. We had recently changed our name and I then figured out why. My point being that fuckery is baked in to the institution.
Anyone who can look at the photo of Josseli Barnica and her baby daughter without crying doesn’t have a heart. But (and I could be mistaken here) my understanding of SB8 pre-Dobbs is that it allowed citizens to sue each other for a $10,000 bounty, but did not contain draconian penalties for health care providers/institutions (like hospitals). If a medical care provider/institution feels his/her/its hands are tied because of the enormous risk of criminal prosecution ending in decades to life in prison and career suicide in the form of loss of license, these terrible consequences for women cannot be said to be the fault of doctors/medical facilities. But if there were no laws pre-Dobbs mandating these draconian penalties, or any penalties other than maybe the forfeiture of a $10,000 bounty, then the fault really does lie with the doctors/health care providers/medical institutions.
It’s not “just $10,000” Under SB 8. You pay your lawyer . Then you pay the plaintiffs legal fees if they win. We’re already talking more like $500,000. For each instance in which you did the right thing and provided medical care when you should instead of rolling the dice on some poor woman’s life. You have violated the law, meaning the Texas medical board can revoke your medical license to practice medicine so you lose your livelihood. Plus since 2022, you can go to prison for life. If you’re the doctor what would you do.
I wouldn’t say the fault lies with them but I reiterate my stance on this as someone who has studied the history of civil rights, the women’s movement both suffrage and the second wave. Where are the courageous fighting within this system? I don’t expect all doctors to risk jail time to treat patients but I do think more would risk it when someone’s actual life was in their hands. And maybe that’s already happening and we don’t know about it. But when I think of the sacrifices that those who fought for dignity and human rights in the past, I wonder why aren’t more doctors standing up?
I know the answer and it makes me nauseous. Things aren’t bad enough yet. As bad as they are, until more people realize they are sue, attest, dehumanize and are going to kill us anyway, so we might as well go out swinging, we are still pawns in their game. Until the actual reality sets in about what they are complicit in, I don’t think we will see that type of defiance. I hope and pray that isn’t the cost, but I fear it will be.
The best way for the actual reality to set in - with everyone, about everything that's going on in this country - is for the Republicans to win this election, and what worries me most is what if that's the _only_ way?
I wonder if the re-emergence of septic wards for women will be needed to shock some decency into our society.
I remember watching a documentary about Jane, the network that helped women get abortions pre-Roe. A doctor interview remarked about these wards, where women who suffered botched abortions were treated and died, if the sepsis was too far along.
Apparently it's going to take many, many deaths to get people's attention...
Good point. While we don't seek to blame health care providers, we also in this country unfortunately cannot assume providers always have their patients' best interests at heart. Between for profit and religious institutions, there are a lot of bad eggs out there, and they can't be let off the hook either.
The religious conviction that a woman's pregnancy is an infant, or a child and in some sense, actually superior to that of a child, even more precious and deserving of protection than even an infant is corrupting our society. It's as if we were all obliged to suffer to advance the belief that the sun and all the planets rotated around the earth as the center of the solar system. Or that we were all created by the hand of a Creator instead of being the product of evolution. No corner of human behavior or society in the world is safe from the sadistic fingers of depraved and absurd religious belief.
My son away in college: he is hiking through a nature preserve to hoof it to a post office in time to overnight me his absentee ballot application so I can be his surrogate and go get him his ballot to overnight back, in time, to vote for Kamala. Proud mama. My daughter already voted for her. All of her college mates did as well. She is in Ithaca, NY -- very liberal area. But wow. Kids are motivated.
My son is also at school and this is his first presidential election. We are in Massachusetts so the president part will not have a direct impact but numbers matter and we also have some pretty important ballot questions. I have nagged him at least 5 times about getting his mail in ballot and making sure it’s post marked on time. He has sent me pics of the ballot arriving and assure me he’s on it. The kids are definitely motivated. I do think youth numbers are going to be high. These kids are more politically aware than I was at that age.
Excellent article Jessica. This all calls to mind the fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition in which sinners were burned at the stake. Here in the Unites States, those, whom our right-wing fanatics label as sinners, will just be allowed to die on their own, either in a hospital, at home, in their cars. or in prison for having violated the anti-abortion laws, such as a woman who sought an abortion after she was savagely raped by a repeat offender. We used to be able to look to our highest Court to vindicate our rights, but not only are they co-conspirators in suppressing them, they are openly and notoriously enriching themselves with lavish payments, gifts, vacations and other such benefits from stakeholders and de facto lobbyists on issues before them. They obviously must have theorized that our founding fathers wanted them to accept these pay-offs. The bottom line is that our country has become sick, and as the saying goes, " A fish stinks from the head down." And the last thing our country needs is for a rotted fish, which was thrown out of the bucket, to be tossed back in.
Have you seen the ads for shirts saying ‘they didn’t burn witches, they burnt women’…
No, I haven’t but I will look for one, because that is the truth.
I have lit a candle. It's outrageous. Outrageous! These politicians have no business meddling where they don't belong! What a beautiful woman and what a preventable tragedy. Disgusting.
How many more is right? She died in 2021. How many more have died since?
Many more have died. It is outrageous that a state the size of Texas, with the wealth that Texas has at it’s disposal, would take 3 YEARS to review a maternal death!!!
As Jessica made plain in her appearance on MSNBC tonight, & in this article; they KNEW that women & girls would die!! They knew & they made plans to deal with the blowback by blaming the Drs, the hospital lawyers, & us - the pro choice people.
Texas put Skop on that maternal mortality review board for the express purpose of trying to cover up the number of deaths related to abortion bans. I hate those people, I despise them, they are evil. I’m going to go donate some more $$ to Colin Allred, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Lucas Kunce, Dan Osborn, & several other Democrats running for House & Senate. Harris must win, but she also must have a Congress to be able to get anything done.
After reading this post I began thinking about thr columnists praising women who would refuse chemo or radiation, or a termination. You know what sick f*cks like that want to do? Here's my hypothesis: a young woman, already a mother, has cancer or a life-threatening pregnancy. She forges treatment or is denied treatment and dies. Forced birth zealots approach thr grieving father and suggest that, to help him, that THEY take the children, just til he gets ba k on his feet, you know, and he never gets them back, because they are adopted by forced birth zealots.
Crazy? Paranoid? I don't think so.
I am sure I am not alone, but I have cried today. More than once. For this mother and for past and future moms.
Me, too.
Yes, I have too; and I have also been so angry that it is making me sick at my stomach. I am just enraged.
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Great info. Seems like the group lining up the most in PA and NC is older white women who are married and have some decent income. Don't know what to make of that. I think Harris is winning only 45% of white women in general , in polls mind you. Maybe these are women who remember life before Roe and are like 'Nope. Not again."
Or they could be like the 70-year-old white women who hang at the bar in our lovely restaurant down the road wearing "Trump girl" shirts and making sure Fox is on the TV.
Or a mix.