In a facility packed with medical professionals, Porsha Ngumezi was left to pass grapefruit-sized blood clots until she bled to death in agonizing pain, screaming in her hospital bed for almost 12 hours. She was surrounded by people who could’ve done something, yet no one stepped in to help.
This is the reality of reproductive care in Texas. The 2021 Texas Heartbeat Act prevents women from seeking an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. This usually occurs around six weeks after conception. It takes four weeks to realize you’ve missed your period, effectively leaving two weeks to seek reproductive care. With the passing of House Bill 7 (HB 7), it’s about to get even worse.
Starting on Dec. 4, Texans can sue anyone who manufactures or provides abortion-inducing drugs, including out-of-state physicians and companies who mail these drugs in to Texas. If found guilty, the defendant can be fined upwards of $100,000. The plaintiff is entitled to 10% of that money if they are unrelated to the fetus, essentially deputizing Texans as “bounty hunters.” Incentivizing Texans to find and report women seeking life-saving reproductive care is unjust and outrageous.
While Texans can still legally travel across state lines for abortions, and often do, this isn’t always accessible. A more feasible option has been consulting out-of-state physicians virtually and receiving abortion pills by mail. Thanks to HB 7, there is no ambiguity in saying this is illegal.
Proponents of the bill, such as Clayton Lansford, junior engineering science and physics double-major and president of the Young Conservatives of Texas at Trinity, argue that it merely enforces the existing abortion laws in Texas.
“All this bill is really doing is just making sure there’s no loopholes in the law and strengthening law enforcement of an already in-place ban, which I think is good,” Lansford said. “I don’t think people should be able to break the law or find loopholes in the law. If something’s in place, I believe it should be strongly in place.”
While it is true that banning abortion is nothing new for Texas, these laws shouldn’t be in place to begin with. Science agrees that a fertilized egg is just that, and life does not begin at conception. When an embryo becomes a person is muddy territory, but women’s rights shouldn’t be. The mother is indisputably alive and deserves bodily autonomy. In any other medical scenario, we are allowed to prioritize ourselves over the lives of others — abortions should be no different.
On top of this, banning abortions hasn’t historically prevented them. Desperate women will find ways to carry out the procedure regardless of the law, leading to preventable deaths by unsafe abortion methods. The Guttmacher Institute found that abortion rates are basically consistent across countries with and without bans — the only thing that changes is the percentage carried out unsafely. In countries with strict bans, the institute considers 31% of abortions to be unsafe. However, in countries without, this number drops to 1%. How many women need to die before their lives are held in the same regard as a zygote?
Several doctors who reviewed Ngumezi’s case in the days following her death were perplexed by the way staff treated her. To these doctors, it was clear what could have saved her life, prevented hours of suffering and left her husband and two sons with a healthy mother: a dilation and curettage (D&C). This simple and noninvasive procedure is common following abortions and miscarriages. In a mere 5–10 minutes, Porsha’s suffering could have been resolved.
There’s only one infuriating reason she was not provided with what any reasonable physician could agree was the best solution: fear of the law and its repercussions. Although a D&C is technically legal, convincing a team of medical professionals that a procedure so closely linked to abortions would not put them in legal danger is far from easy. After all, a Texas physician who violates SB 8 may face hefty fines or have their license suspended. Soon enough, out-of-state doctors won’t be able to help either. The result is an epidemic of powerless physicians and meaningless deaths.
Porsha Ngumezi deserved better. Not only her, but countless other women with stories tragically similar to Porsha’s. Lawmakers need to prioritize the lives of those who are already here — who are already in pain and need medical support — over lives that do not yet exist. The rates for abortion will not change with these laws. Instead, HB 7 will kill women while they cry for help.
