Days after a San Antonio emergency room sent Tierra Walker home with a diagnosis of pre-eclampsia in 2024, her son found her dead. It was his 15th birthday.
On Tuesday, Ms. Walker’s aunt Latanya Walker sued Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas and others arguing that her death was a result of the state’s ban on abortions. Ms. Walker had sought an abortion, her lawyer said, because she didn’t expect to survive the pregnancy with her diagnosis.
The lawsuit filed in a state court in San Antonio is the latest challenge to Texas’ abortion ban, which remains one of the strictest in the nation. The suit argues that the law’s medical emergency exception exists only on paper and that doctors who invoke it risk prison, fines and the loss of their license.
Other lawsuits by women who say they were denied abortions despite grave risks to their lives or their fetuses have been dismissed or blocked by state courts.
The suit specifically names the sitting attorney general, Mr. Paxton, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate; the head of the Texas Medical Board; the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and several doctors who treated her for complications during her pregnancy.
The lawsuit claims that Mr. Paxton’s office and medical leaders in the state created a climate of fear that affected the care Ms. Walker received. Doctors who perform an abortion outside the law’s narrow exception can face up to 99 years in prison, fines of at least $100,000 and the loss of their medical license.
The plaintiff is seeking an unspecified amount of money. The lawsuit also called the law unconstitutional because it deprived Ms. Walker of her right to live, Latanya Walker’s lawyers said.
Mr. Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Officials with the Texas Medical Board and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio declined to comment.
Mr. Paxton has filed several lawsuits against medical providers and medical organizations that prescribe and send abortion pills from states where abortion is legal to people in Texas.
The Texas law offers a narrow medical emergency exemption to save the life of the pregnant patient.
Ms. Walker died in 2024 after seeing many medical providers to help address pre-eclampsia, a severe high blood pressure condition in pregnancy that can be life threatening, and other health issues, lawyers for Latanya Walker said. She also suffered from pre-eclampsia in 2021 while pregnant with twins who were stillborn.
“Tierra Walker is proof that there is no exception because if she did not qualify, if even her doctors were too scared to act, then the medical emergency exception is nothing more than words on a page,” said Molly Duane, one of the attorneys.
Latanya Walker is being represented by Amplify Legal, the litigation arm of Abortion in America, an abortion rights advocacy group, and the Marynell Maloney Law Firm. The lawsuit claims that the abortion ban contributed to Ms. Walker’s death.
“For months, Ms. Walker had been asking for termination of her pregnancy — even though this was a wanted pregnancy — because she did not think she would survive the pregnancy. Tragically, she was right. An abortion at any point during her pregnancy would have saved her life,” the lawsuit said.
Ms. Walker, who was 37, left behind a teenage son and a husband.
Several other women have died after being denied or delayed pregnancy care under the state’s abortion restrictions, though the role of the law in individual cases remains contested. The full number of women in Texas who have died or suffered severe complications because of the restrictions is unknown.
The Texas Department of State Health Services announced this month that it would break with past precedent of releasing its biennial maternal mortality report in early September and wait until after the midterm elections in November. The report was expected to unveil the first set of data on maternal mortality since abortion became all but illegal in Texas.
Thirteen states ban abortion outright. Seven more states bar it after six to 12 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending a federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly half a century.
Ms. Walker’s story gained widespread attention after a report by ProPublica.
Ms. Walker spent long stints at area hospitals and visited the emergency room several times during her pregnancy, where she underwent several tests. Despite the health risks, the lawsuit said none of the hospital staff advised her “on the possibility of abortion as a lifesaving medical treatment, offered her this treatment, or suggested that she leave the state.”
“Instead, hospital staff kept insisting ‘nothing is wrong with the baby’ and continued to refuse the care that she needed on that basis,” the lawsuit said.
She returned to the emergency room one last time on Dec. 27, 2024, where she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, but was discharged. Her teenage son found her dead days later.
“We want justice,” Latanya Walker said Wednesday during a news conference. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. This needs to stop.”
The post Family of Woman Who Died While Pregnant Sues Texas Over Abortion Ban appeared first on New York Times.
