- This week, it was reported by ProPublica that at least two women have died in Texas as a result of the state's draconian anti-abortion laws. openDemocracy has long investigated the attacks on abortion rights in the US and beyond, and earlier this year we spoke to pregnant women, doctors and campaigners in Texas to understand the harsh reality facing pregnant people in the state. Their stories are more important than ever ahead of the US presidential election next week.
In 2023, a woman walked into a health centre in Houston trailing an IV pole. She was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum – essentially, an extreme form of morning sickness. The woman was vomiting constantly, could not retain food or fluids, and was being kept alive by being fed through a drip.
“She had been to the ER so many times,” family medicine provider and physician Bhavik Kumar told openDemocracy, “and she was so frail and thin that the ER sent her home with an IV pole. I’d never seen that before.”
The patient asked for an abortion, which affords rapid relief from hyperemesis gravidarum. Before the 2022 fall of Roe v Wade, which constitutionally protected the right to abortion, Kumar could have provided that care in his outpatient clinic. But because of Texas’s new near-total ban, he couldn’t help.
