Woman in agony from nonviable pregnancy forced to wait five days for abortion in Texas

The case has magnified health emergencies and legal minefields surrounding abortion across the US following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade

Anti-abortion laws in Texas, and the healthcare crisis that followed them, forced a pregnant woman in the state to wait five days to receive abortion care for a nonviable pregnancy facing a severe medical emergency.

By the 15th week of Kristina Cruickshank’s pregnancy, a large, fluid-filled sac had surrounded the fetus, and blood-filled cysts covered her ovaries while fluid filled her abdomen, according to the Houston Chronicle, citing medical records shared with the newspaper.

The Chronicle reports that she was “frail, vomiting and in pain” when she arrived at Methodist Sugar Land hospital on 3 June. She arrived just three weeks before the US Supreme Court revoked a constitutional right to abortion care but nearly one year after the state enacted a law banning most abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy.

No one at the hospital was equipped to perform dilation and evacuation, a common form of procedural abortion care while the hospital’s administration untangled the legal constraints of the state law that could open up providers to felony prosecutions and lawsuits.

She waited over the next three days to be moved to Texas Children’s Hospital, where pregnant patients who need a higher level of care typically are transferred, according to the newspaper.

Medical records reviewed by the outlet revealed that the hospital initially “declined” her transfer while an ethics committee reviewed the case.

Doctors then contacted a physician at Memorial Hermann hospital. The pregnancy was terminated on 8 June – five days after she was first admitted, according to the Chronicle.

Dr Lauren Swords, medical director of the Sugar Land hospital’s birthing centre, told the newspaper that she believes Texas laws had “something to do with this unfortunate delay of care.”

“There’s so much about these laws that people just do not really understand outside of healthcare,” she told the Chronicle. “This is a perfect example of how these laws that are in place can directly impact maternal health and care. And it’s very frustrating to be a gynecologist in Texas.”

The case has magnified myriad health emergencies and legal minefields surrounding abortion care in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Since then, a wave of state-level anti-abortion laws followed, leaving providers and people who assist in abortion care vulnerable to felony prosecution and lawsuits while patients who seek potentially life-saving care are left with fewer options to find it.

At the time of Ms Cruickshank’s crisis, Texas law outlawed abortion at the first sign of embryonic cardiac activity, which typically develops at six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant.

Ms Cruickshank was admitted to an emergency room on 15 May with heavy bleeding, with tests finding that the fetus had developed a large cystic hygroma -- birth defect that causes a fluid-filled sac to form, typically around the head and neck, according to the newspaper.

The fetus’ heart continued to beat. Her admission just weeks later revealed a rare condition in which fluid-filled cysts form in the placental tissue, which the fetus cannot survive.

Last month, Texas enacted a near-total ban on all abortion care from fertilsation, with exceptions only if the pregnant patient faces “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy.” It does not include exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest.

Providers can now face $100,000 in fines and life in prison if convicted of performing an abortion.

Texas is among at least 12 states that have effectively outlawed abortion entirely following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on 24 June, which struck down the precedents affirming the constitutional right to abortion care in Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey.

State-level anti-abortion laws that followed have forced the closure of more than 40 clinics and denied access to care for millions of women and girls.