After new reporting detailed the latest known woman who died because doctors would not provide her with abortion care under Texas’ ban, the Democratic lawmaker who authored the Women’s Health Protection Act condemned Republicans in Congress for refusing to “protect women’s basic freedom to survive their own pregnancies.”

“It would take only six Republicans in the House to join with us and pass this vital legislation to restore bodily autonomy to every person in this country, regardless of their state or zip code,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), whose bill would create a new legal protection for the right to provide and obtain abortion care.

Chu’s call came as ProPublica reported on the death of Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old pregnant mother of a teenage son who asked doctors to terminate her pregnancy in October 2024 after she experienced seizures and feared she would develop preeclampsia, a life-threatening complication that had led to the stillbirth of her twins a few years earlier.

“Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?” Walker asked doctors at Methodist Hospital Northeast in San Antonio.

The medical staff assured her there was nothing wrong with her pregnancy and blamed her symptoms on pre-existing conditions including diabetes and high blood pressure—but more than a dozen OB/GYNs reviewed her case and told ProPublica doctors had not followed standard medical practice, which would have been to advise Walker early on in the pregnancy that her health conditions could lead to complications and “to offer termination at any point if she wanted.”

Had doctors done do, all of the medical experts said, Walker would not have died at 20 weeks pregnant on her 14-year-old son’s birthday last December.

“Her death was preventable, and it was caused by a law written by Republicans to control women’s bodies, no matter the consequences. This is the disgraceful reality of Republican abortion bans that criminalize care and sacrifice women’s lives,” said Chu.

Walker found out she was five weeks pregnant in September 2024 after experiencing a seizure. Doctors also noted she had “hypertension at levels so high that it reduces circulation to major organs and can cause a heart attack or stroke,” which put her at increased risk for preeclampsia.

But instead of warning Walker of the risks, the medical staff sent her home, where she continued having seizures through her first trimester and her fiance and aunt took turns watching over her.

Texas law prohibits medical providers from “aiding and abetting” abortion care, with doctors facing the loss of their medical license and up to 99 years in prison if they provide an abortion. Abortions are ostensibly permitted in cases when a pregnant person’s life or major body function is at risk—but Walker’s case demonstrates how medical exceptions within abortion bans often do nothing to ensure a dangerous pregnancy can be terminated to protect a woman’s life.

At least one of the more than 90 doctors—including 21 OB/GYNs—who became involved in Walker’s care last year, when she was repeatedly hospitalized, acknowledged in a case file that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death.”

But none of them ever talked to her about terminating the pregnancy.

As Walker’s pregnancy progressed, she developed a blood clot in her leg that didn’t respond to anticoagulation medicine, and her seizures and high blood pressure remained uncontrolled.

She was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 20 weeks pregnant on December 27—but doctors did not even label her condition as “severe” in her files, let alone provide her with the standard care for the condition at that point in pregnancy, which is an abortion.

Instead, they gave her more blood pressure medication and sent her home, where her son, JJ, found her dead days later.

Author and abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti said Republicans would likely respond to the news of Walker’s death—as they have in the cases of other women who have died after being unable to get abortions in states that ban them—with claims that doctors were legally allowed to “intervene” or “treat” Walker.

“They won’t say she could have had an abortion because they don’t believe in life-saving abortions,” she said.

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This year, in the months after Walker’s death and following outrage over numerous similar cases, Texas lawmakers passed a law that Republicans claim would make it easier for women to obtain abortions in cases where they face life-threatening conditions in pregnancy; their conditions no longer need to put them in “imminent” danger for them to obtain care.

But doctors told ProPublica that hospitals in Texas are still likely to avoid providing abortions in cases like Walker’s, even under the new statute.

“How many more women have to needlessly suffer?" asked Chu. “How many more have to die? How many more children have to grow up without their mother? How many more parents have to lose their adult daughters before Republicans in Congress finally do what’s right and protect women’s basic freedom to survive their own pregnancies?”

“This doesn’t have to be our reality,” she added.

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