Two Texas Moms Were Forced to Wait for Urgent Care After Pregnancy Loss. They Died.

“Standard of Fear,” a project led by Lauren Caruba and Marin Wolf of The Dallas Morning News, details the consequences of recent laws restricting abortions in Texas, which now has “one of the country’s most strict and punitive abortion bans.” In this story, Caruba and Wolf, with María Ramos Pacheco, illustrate the final hours of Porsha Ngumezi and Brenda Yolani Arzu Ramirez, two women who died following delays in care. The Morning News team does admirable work to demonstrate the loss of medical expertise, confidence, and data following the Texas bans. The depth of the team’s reporting is most clear, however, in the stark, harrowing narratives of Ngumezi and Ramirez.

At the outset of Texas’ abortion ban, medical experts worried women like Porsha and Brenda would die from delays in care.

It may never be known exactly how many Texas women have died as a result of the state’s abortion restrictions. It’s not always possible to determine to what degree the bans, and the fear around them, influenced a patient’s care.

And the state is not trying to find out. The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, the body responsible for investigating maternal deaths, has announced it is not investigating cases from 2022 and 2023, including the immediate aftermath of the state’s almost-total abortion ban.

To help fill that gap, The Dallas Morning News gathered hundreds of pages of autopsies and death records of maternal deaths that have occurred since Texas restricted abortion in late 2021. The News then asked obstetricians, including those specialized in abortion procedures, to review cases where abortion care might have been lifesaving.

In the cases of Brenda and Porsha, those experts agreed. They both died after hospitals chose not to provide abortion procedures.