Provided to ProPublica by the Barnica Family
Texas Woman Died From Miscarriage After Being Denied Abortion: Report
ProPublica reported Wednesday on another woman who died due to abortion bans in the United States. Joselli Barnica ⎻ a 28-year-old mother in Texas ⎻ died after suffering for 40 hours with a miscarriage that became infected, when doctors refused to intervene with an abortion to save her life.
Barnica was 17-weeks pregnant when she was rushed to the hospital with cramping and bleeding from a miscarriage. Doctors discovered she was dilated 9cm, a condition that left her very vulnerable to infection. It was one day after the six-week heartbeat abortion ban went into effect in Texas.
Under that law doctors had to wait until the fetal "heartbeat" stopped before they could intervene. When her husband begged for her life, doctors told him it would be a "crime" to perform an abortion to save her.
More than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica that a rushed delivery or an abortion procedure was necessary to stave off the infection that eventually killed Barnica. Instead, she sat dilated for 40 hours while her uterus filled with bacteria.
"If this was Massachusetts or Ohio, she would have had that delivery within a couple hours," said Dr. Susan Mann, a Harvard University professor and national expert in patient safety.
Doctors say the case is similar to the death of Savita Halappavanar, a woman who died of septic shock in 2012 in Ireland after a nurse denied her an abortion, saying, "this is a Catholic country." Outrage over Halappavanar's death led to a constitutional referendum that legalized abortion in Ireland in 2018; four years before the fall of Roe v. Wade in the United States.
40 hours into the miscarriage the fetal heartbeat finally stopped, and doctors provided Barnica with medication to speed up delivery. Eight hours later Barnica was discharged from the hospital. She returned to the hospital two days later with heavy bleeding, and soon after died of sepsis. She left behind her husband and now four-year old daughter.
Never during the miscarriage did the danger to Barnica's life meet the standard to perform an emergency abortion under Texas law, which doctors say is too vague. She was never bleeding out. Her heart never stopped. And yet her condition became so serious she died three days later, because doctors never had a legal pathway to perform a standard procedure to stave off the infection. The 17-week fetus had no chance of survival.
Like Amber Thurman in Georgia, doctors say Joselli Barnica's death was "preventable." Donald Trump has promised that if he is elected, "women won't even have to think about abortion anymore," and that he would be their "protector," after bragging for years that he was responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned.
