Survivors of Texas’s increasingly restrictive abortion ban spoke out this week about a law taking effect Thursday that puts bounties on women who order pregnancy-ending pills online.
House Bill 7, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, will go into effect just weeks before the one-year anniversary of the death of San Antonio mother Tierra Walker, who was denied a life-saving abortion despite her severe underlying medical conditions.
“When physicians feel unable to counsel patients honestly, and when hospitals fear legal consequences for providing evidence-based care, the result is a system that fails people in the moments when they need help the most,” fourth-year Texas medical student Uma Reddy said during a press call hosted by nonprofit Free & Just. “No patient should ever have to cross state lines to receive essential health care.”
HB 7 allows private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who manufactures, distributes, or plays any part in helping a pregnant Texas woman access abortion-inducing medication. That includes out-of-state doctors who prescribe the medication, companies responsible for the mailing and even family members or friends who order the medication for their pregnant friends.
What makes the law particularly troubling for those who’ve already survived the chaos caused by the Texas abortion ban, including Kaitlyn Kash, is that if the person who brings the lawsuit is successful, they win at least $100,000 from he defendant if they are related to the fetus.
Even if they aren’t related, a private individual who files a successful lawsuit can still get $10,000, with the rest of the money donated to charity.
“HB 7 will be the fourth cruel and harmful law that says that the government knows how to provide healthcare better than our doctors — that the government knows how to provide or what kind of healthcare we need more than we do and what our own bodies are telling us,” Kash told reporters. “Someone is already pregnant right now, who is going to need medication abortion. Someone is already pregnant right now, whose life will be forever changed tomorrow when a new law goes into effect.”
Kash, who was forced to carry her dead fetus for weeks as a result of Texas’s abortion ban, is one of dozens of women who argue they have been denied necessary medical care due to the law.
One such woman who reportedly died due to being denied medical care under the ban is San Antonio woman Tierra Walker, who died just after last Christmas.
Walker was hospitalized at Methodist Hospital Northeast in the San Antonio suburb of Live Oak last year when doctors discovered that she was pregnant. She was hospitalized due to complications caused by the pregnancy, according to a ProPublica investigation.
She would later die 20 weeks pregnant due to preeclampsia, an autopsy obtained by ProPublica confirmed, a pregnancy-related blood pressure disorder. It’s also the same disease that led to the stillborn birth of two twins years earlier.
Despite Walker’s known underlying health conditions and medical history, not one of the 90 physicians involved in her care during her last pregnancy recommended terminating the pregnancy, ProPublica reports.
“I want everyone to not only honour Tierra, but to honour her son, JJ, who is admitted to the holiday season without his mother,” Kash said during the press call. “He is without his mother because of Texas’s extreme abortion laws, and tomorrow we get a fourth ban.”
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