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abortion
'How Many More Have to Die?' Asks Democrat as Another Texas Woman's Death Blamed on Abortion Ban
"Let's be very clear: Republicans are killing women," said one abortion rights advocate. "Democrats need to start calling them murderers loudly and often."
Nov 20, 2025
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.
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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GOP Accused of Trying to Slip Backdoor Abortion Ban Into Government Funding Bill
"Trump said he’d leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along," said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
Nov 09, 2025
Congressional Republicans are reportedly trying to insert anti-abortion language into government funding legislation as the shutdown continues, with the GOP and President Donald Trump digging in against a clean extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits as insurance premiums surge.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sounded the alarm on Saturday about what he characterized as the latest Republican sneak attack on reproductive rights.
"Republicans said they might vote to lower Americans’ healthcare costs, but only if we agree to include a backdoor national abortion ban," Wyden said in remarks on the Senate floor.
The senator was referring to a reported GOP demand that any extension of ACA subsidies must include language that bars the tax credits from being used to purchase plans that cover abortion care.
But as the health policy organization KFF has noted, the ACA already has "specific language that applies Hyde Amendment restrictions to the use of premium tax credits, limiting them to using federal funds to pay for abortions only in cases that endanger the life of the woman or that are a result of rape or incest."
"The ACA also explicitly allows states to bar all plans participating in the state marketplace from covering abortions, which 25 states have done since the ACA was signed into law in 2010," according to KFF.
Wyden said Saturday—which marked day 39 of the shutdown—that "Republicans are spinning a tale that the government is funding abortion."
"It's not," Wyden continued. "What Republicans are talking about putting on the table amounts to nothing short of a backdoor national abortion ban. Under this plan, Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive healthcare. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations."
"The possibilities are endless, but the results are the same: a complete and total restriction on abortion, courtesy of Republicans," the senator added. "Trump said he'd leave abortion care up to the states. Well, this latest scheme makes it crystal clear: A de facto nationwide abortion ban has been his plan all along."
The GOP effort to attach anti-abortion provisions to government funding legislation adds yet another hurdle in negotiations to end the shutdown, which the Trump administration has used to throttle federal nutrition assistance and accelerate its purge of the federal workforce.
Trump is also pushing a proposal that would differently distribute federal funds that would have otherwise gone toward the enhanced ACA tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
"It sounds like it could be a plan for health accounts that could be used for insurance that doesn’t cover preexisting conditions, which could create a death spiral in ACA plans that do," said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF.
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'Full of Sh*t' Texas Cops Lied About Why They Used AI Surveillance to Track Woman Who Had Abortion
"This is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do," said a pair of reproductive rights reporters.
Oct 08, 2025
Police in Texas—led by a county sheriff later charged with an unrelated felony sex crime—lied about their motive for using artificial intelligence-powered surveillance technology to search for a woman who allegedly self-administered a medication abortion, new documents obtained by 404 Media and Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed on Tuesday.
In May, 404 Media's Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler reported that the Johnson County Sheriff's Office tapped into 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras manufactured by Flock Safety while conducting a nationwide search for an unnamed woman who authorities said took abortion medication in alleged violation of a 2021 state ban that empowers anti-abortion vigilantes to sue anyone who “aids or abets” the medical procedure.
Since thata law's passage—and the right-wing US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization the following year—Texas has passed additional forced birth laws banning nearly all abortions as well as targeting providers who mail abortion pills from other states.
According to Cox and Koebler, Johnson County Sheriff's deputies accessed Flock cameras in states where abortion is legal, including Illinois and Washington. Johnson County Sheriff Adam King told 404 Media at the time that his department searched for the woman because "her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.”
“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” King said. “It was about her safety.”
NEW: Cops in Texas told 404 Media in May they used Flock to find a woman who self-administered an abortion out of concern for her safety. Documents now show police were conducting a “death investigation” and discussed whether they could charge her with a crime: www.404media.co/police-said-...
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— 404 Media (@404media.co) October 7, 2025 at 6:30 AM
King's office, forced birth advocates, and Flock Safety subsequently attempted to gaslight those who reported that deputies searched for the woman as part of a probe into potential violations of state laws.
However, new documents and court records obtained by the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and shared with 404 Media show that Johnson County Sheriff's deputies initiated a "death investigation" of a "nonviable fetus" and discussed prosecuting the woman for allegedly self-administering an abortion.
"To no one's surprise, they were full of shit," Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung wrote Tuesday for Valenti's Abortion, Every Day Substack.
As EFF's Dave Maass and Rindala Alajaji noted:
In recent years, anti-abortion advocates and prosecutors have increasingly attempted to use “fetal homicide” and “wrongful death” statutes—originally intended to protect pregnant people from violence—to criminalize abortion and pregnancy loss. These laws, which exist in dozens of states, establish legal personhood of fetuses and can be weaponized against people who end their own pregnancies or experience a miscarriage.
In fact, a new report from Pregnancy Justice found that in just the first two years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases charging pregnant people with crimes related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth—most under child neglect, endangerment, or abuse laws that were never intended to target pregnant people. Nine cases included allegations around individuals’ abortions, such as possession of abortion medication or attempts to obtain an abortion—instances just like this one. The report also highlights how, in many instances, prosecutors use tangentially related criminal charges to punish people for abortion, even when abortion itself is not illegal.
"By framing their investigation of a self-administered abortion as a 'death investigation' of a 'nonviable fetus,' Texas law enforcement was signaling their intent to treat the woman’s self-managed abortion as a potential homicide, even though Texas law does not allow criminal charges to be brought against an individual for self-managing their own abortion," Maass and Alajaji added.
Valenti and Cheung asserted that "this is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do: harass them over their abortions."
They were referring not only to the Texas woman's "vindictive, controlling partner" who tipped off police—and was later convicted of pistol-whipping and choking her—but also to King, who, despite being recently arrested and indicted on four felony sexual harassment charges, was allowed to return to work part-time. King was also previously indicted in August for alleged sexual harassment and corrupt influence for allegedly retaliating against a witness.
"These are the kind of men who target women for their abortions," Valenti and Cheung wrote. "It’s a trend that AED warned about in our 2025 predictions: that the anti-abortion movement would increasingly rely on aggrieved and abusive men to do their dirty work."
They continued:
Since November, top Texas-based anti-abortion activists have bragged about recruiting men to sue over their partner’s abortions. Jonathan Mitchell is one of the anti-abortion attorneys leading that charge: after his client Marcus Silva sued his ex’s friends over her abortion, he tried to use the case to blackmail her into resuming a sexual relationship. At this point, even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reportedly recruiting men for this purpose.
"This isn’t about a few bad actors—but the predictable outcome of living in a reproductive police state bent on surveillance and punishment," Valenti and Cheung said. "And in a moment when pregnancy criminalization is on the rise, it’s vital we understand how this police state operates."
The willingness of Republicans including US Vice President JD Vance to embrace the tracking of women who have or are seeking abortions has raised alarms among reproductive rights advocates.
"Reproductive dragnets are not hypothetical concerns. These surveillance tactics open the door for overzealous, anti-abortion state actors to amass data to build cases against people for their abortion care and pregnancy outcomes," Ashley Kurzweil, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media Tuesday.
“Law enforcement exploitation of mass surveillance infrastructure for reproductive health criminalization promises to be increasingly disruptive to the entire abortion access and pregnancy care landscape," Kurzweil added. "The prevalence of these harmful data practices and risks of legal action drive real fear among abortion seekers and helpers—even intimidating people from getting the care they need."
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