In September 2021, 28-year-old Josseli Barnica died of infection because hospital doctors said it would be a “crime” to intervene while she was undergoing a miscarriage. Josseli was 17 weeks pregnant when it occurred, as the doctors themselves noted in the medical records. At that point, they should have suggested speeding up the delivery or emptying the uterus to avoid a deadly infection, but they did nothing for fear of the state’s restrictive laws prohibiting all forms of abortion, once again bringing to light the horrific death of a woman from failure to care for a crisis in pregnancy. ProPublica, the nonprofit news organization specializing in investigative journalism in the public interest, looked into the case.
As the organization reports, “although advocates insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the mother, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, jail time and professional ruin.”
In particular, strict state abortion laws prohibit medical personnel from terminating the heartbeat of a fetus under any circumstances. Barnica’s husband, who had urgently gone to see his wife at the hospital while leaving his job at a construction site, told her what the medical team had told him, “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat, it would be a crime to abort it.”
During 40 hours of anguish and pain, Barnica begged doctors to help her go home while her uterus was exposed to the bacteria that caused the infection and death of the 28-year-old, already the mother of a 4-year-old. Josseli then expelled the fetus, but it died after three days.
Doctors responsible for the care of the young woman who died at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest declined to comment on the incident or provide detailed medical information about it.
In a statement, HCA Healthcare said, “our responsibility is to comply with applicable state and federal laws and regulations, and physicians exercise their independent judgment.”
The number of women who have died in Texas while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, has soared since the state enacted an abortion ban in 2021. According to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute, conducted based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports, maternal mortality rose 56 percent between 2019 and 2022.
