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'Perfect example' of Texas' ban: Woman waited 5 days 'frail, vomiting, in pain' for abortion care [1]
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Date: 2022-09-08
At the time, Texas legislators had made it illegal to get an abortion in most cases, but it wasn’t yet associated with a felony. That would happen three weeks later, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Texas Republicans’ heartbeat law went into effect last September. The law maintains that a "physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman” if the physician detects “a fetal heartbeat." The only exceptions are cases in which the “mother’s life is in danger,” or there is a medical emergency.
Adding to the state’s restrictive reproductive care, Texas also became one of 13 states that enacted abortion bans using what's known as “trigger laws,” or legislation that only goes into effect in certain circumstances. That circumstance regarding abortion was the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which went into effect on August 25. For Texas, that means it is now a felony offense for a medical institution to perform an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected and there are no applicable exceptions.
For Cruickshank, that meant she had to wait three days just to be transferred to Texas Children’s Hospital. The hospital she initially arrived at, Houston Methodist Sugar Land, wasn’t equipped to perform the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure she needed for her partial molar pregnancy, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Partial molar pregnancies are fatal to the fetus, and left untreated, often to the pregnant person. In a partial molar pregnancy, the embryo has too many chromosomes. Where the fetus would normally develop following implantation in the uterine wall, a cluster of cysts form instead. Those cysts can burst, causing complications and even death. There is also an increased risk of cancer following a molar or partial molar pregnancy.
Dr. Lauren Swords, the medical director of the Sugar Land hospital’s birthing center, told the newspaper she believes the new laws had “something to do with this unfortunate delay of care.”
“There's so much about these laws that people just do not really understand outside of health care,” Swords said. “This is a perfect example of how these laws that are in place can directly impact maternal health and care. And it's very frustrating to be a gynecologist in Texas.”
The Texas Children’s Hospital initially “declined” Cruickshank’s transfer and left following requests “pending”—requests that Swords said “would not have taken this long” before anti-abortion laws.
Cruickshank told the newspaper she and her husband, John, were left waiting. “You have to lay there and wait and have your life in the hands of an ethics committee, or a doctor that wants to help but can't,” Kristina Cruickshank said. “Not knowing what was going to happen, or how long I was going to have to be in the hospital, or if you're going to have to travel somewhere—that was the hardest part.”
Cruickshank told the Houston Chronicle that even though it’s been three months since the ordeal, she is still recovering, fighting “a persistent rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, and anxiety” while doctors are in search of “traces of cancer.”
RELATED STORY: Texas provides a chilling glimpse into our post-Roe future
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/8/2121531/--Perfect-example-of-Texas-ban-Woman-waited-5-days-frail-vomiting-in-pain-for-abortion-care
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