By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-30 00:46:18 | Updated at 2025-01-30 17:22:32
16 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // Medical negligence and poor medical care, not pro-life laws, caused the death for a number of high-risk pregnant women who have died since the overturning of Roe, according to an analyst writing for the publication Commonplace.
There is not one state in the country that bans treatment of an ectopic pregnancy or penalizes providing medical attention to post-abortion complications, wrote Leah Sargeant, a senior policy analyst for the DC-based think tank Niskanen Center, in the Jan. 27 article.
“Doctors shouldn’t be able to hide behind abortion laws to cover for poor care,” Sargeant wrote. “Abortion isn’t a solution to the vulnerability of poor or undocumented women who hope to hold their child, but fear their doctors. These women’s preventable deaths should provoke a medical reckoning. A doctor should safeguard a woman and her child together, not pit them against each other.”
Slanted reporting on tragic deaths of numerous mothers post-Roe mark a slew of media attempts to frame pro-life laws as the cause, Sargeant wrote.
“Even when no abortion is sought, even when a baby has already died, abortion laws are blamed as the reason a paramedic dawdled in an emergency, a clinician failed to give a patient the information she needed, a doctor sent a septic woman home,” Sargeant continued.
>> Coalition calls for higher standards of health care, information
for women and unborn children <<
Texan Yenifer ‘Yeni’ Alvarez-Estrada Glick was one such woman who lost her life after medical professionals failed to act, Sargeant wrote. Glick, who did not have insurance, had a high-risk pregnancy. She suffered from diabetes and hypertension, and had a history of pulmonary edema. She wanted to keep her baby, whom she had named Selene.
Had Glick delivered earlier in the pregnancy with the help of proactive doctors, or had paramedics acted quickly to save the mother and child, both may have survived, according to Sargeant.
Sargeant emphasized that abortion is used as a “stopgap” and the only way to save the lives of expectant women who experience poverty and marginalization.
“Expecting poor women to rely on abortion to protect them from care deserts or underinsurance is oppression redistributed,” she wrote.
Glick’s story is not the only one indicating shocking medical negligence leading to the death of both expectant mother and her unborn child. Sargeant examined a number of instances where the story has been framed so as to blame the pro-life laws of the state where the tragedy took place, and demonstrated that doctors and misinformation instead played leading roles.
Women are endangered, and doctors may be misled, by slanted reports that have misrepresented and exaggerated risks around the legality of treating miscarriages, pregnancy and abortion complications, Sargeant wrote.
She later added that some social media posts and formal reporting have “falsely indicated that women should not expect to receive care — leading at least one woman to stay at home, dying rather than seek the care she assumed was out of reach.”
That woman, Candi Miller, was a Georgia resident who died at home after taking chemical abortion drugs followed by a lethal mix of painkillers and fentanyl. According to her family, Miller did not seek medical attention because she was afraid of being prosecuted.
But misinformation comes with multifaceted risks and effects, Sargeant pointed out.
“Exaggerated reporting of what the law allows or forbids doesn’t just endanger mothers like Candi Miller; it offers cover to doctors who offer subpar care to vulnerable mothers, and then hide their malpractice behind the false excuse of the law,” she wrote.
Abortion cannot be the solution for at-risk expectant women in poverty, Sargeant added.
“Women and children deserve real care — both during the unique challenges of pregnancy and for the whole of their lives,” she said. “Abortion isn’t an escape hatch for systemic injustice; it’s a further violation.”
Sargeant’s full article can be read here.
