ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to investigative journalism. ProPublica covers a range of topics including government and politics, business, criminal justice, the environment, education, health care, immigration and technology.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Says Legislature Should Clarify Abortion Law to Protect Mothers at Risk

PUBLISHED 1/22/2025 by

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Sunday said the legislature should amend the language of the state’s near-total abortion ban to address confusion over when doctors may terminate pregnancies. Patrick is the first major state elected official to offer support for changing the state’s abortion law in this legislative session.

“I do think we need to clarify any language so that doctors are not in fear of being penalized if they think the life of the mother is at risk,” Patrick said on the WFAA program Inside Texas Politics.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.

PUBLISHED 11/25/2024 by and

Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see his wife. Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage

PUBLISHED 10/30/2024 by and | UPDATED 11/1/2024 at 11:07 A.M. PT

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy. The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria. Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.

Abortion Opponents Use Deaths of Two Georgia Women to Push Dangerous Lies About Abortion Pills

PUBLISHED 9/25/2024 by

After reports emerged that two women died as a result of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, abortion opponents are callously using these tragic deaths to fuel false claims that abortion pills are dangerous and to push for FDA removal of mifepristone from the market.

Rather than calling on legislators to clarify life-saving exceptions, abortion opponents are doubling down on misinformation they’ve been peddling for years about the safety of abortion pills.

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.

PUBLISHED 9/17/2024 by

Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, a panel of experts, including 10 doctors, deemed Amber Nicole Thurman’s death “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.

Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light.

Their reviews of individual patient cases are not made public. But ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state. There are almost certainly others. Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine.

Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos

PUBLISHED 8/13/2024 by and

Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.

Dozens of never-before-published videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing, to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.

Texas Sends Millions to Crisis Pregnancy Centers. It’s Meant to Help Needy Families, But No One Knows if It Works.

PUBLISHED 7/11/2024 by , , and

Two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas leads the nation in funding for crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). The system is meant to help growing families, but it’s riddled with waste and lacks oversight, a ProPublica and CBS News investigation found.

What’s worse: Lawmakers around the country are considering programs modeled on Texas’ CPC system, called Alternatives to Abortion.

For the Women Who Accused the Trump Campaign of Harassment, It’s Been More Harassment

PUBLISHED 5/29/2024 by

At least four women of color involved in the 2016 Trump campaign are embroiled in legal fights over workplace harassment, discrimination or violations of nondisclosure agreements. They have been subjected to scorched-earth tactics.

Trump is a well-known bully who has belittled and sought to dominate political rivals. It turns out that Trump’s campaign used similar bullying tactics against its own workers. These fights have been waged out of the public eye against women with few resources to stand up against the campaign’s battery of lawyers, paid from a seemingly bottomless trove of campaign money.

Some Republicans Were Willing to Compromise on Abortion Ban Exceptions. Anti-Abortion Activists Made Sure They Didn’t.

PUBLISHED 11/28/2023 by

On the floors of state legislatures over the past year, doctors detailed the risks their pregnant patients have faced when forced to wait to terminate until their health deteriorated. Women shared their trauma. Some Republican lawmakers even promised to support clarifications.

But so far, few efforts to add exceptions to the laws have succeeded.