Originally published at: Tierra Walker Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion. Her Family Is Suing Ken Paxton. - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. The family of a woman who died after she could not get an abortion in Texas is suing doctors and state officials including Attorney General Ken Paxton. It is the first…
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Bastards all! Letting a patient die.
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This is cold - blooded murder by the State of Texas.
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Paxton doesn’t care if women die.
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Ken Paxton has repeatedly shown his willingness to punish healthcare professionals and institutions who provide life-saving healthcare to pregnant women who are suffering pregnancy complications, and to deliberately obscure what exceptions, if any, the Texas abortion law is intended to provide. I struggle to see the point of suing healthcare professionals and institutions who are as much victims of the legislation, even if their risks are financial and professional, not life and death.
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The hospitals and medical people are stuck in the middle on this…I’m sure the hospital’s lawyers understood that any abortion would have invited an attack from Paxton and the Texas government. The doctors were probably told that abortions basically weren’t allowed, because that’s what the state of Texas was doing…Paxton going after people even when an abortion was clearly legal makes it clear that any abortion would cause problems for them.
The problem is that morally the medical people should have done the right thing, she was in danger of dying and needed the abortion to save her life. That was apparently clear long before she died, and they should have stood up and made the case. It’s hard to ask them to risk their careers, financial penalties, and prison, those are the consequences aimed at them, controlled by a zealot like Paxton. But without a challenge more women will die…this lawsuit may at least punish those who are driving this, and may also force the state to make real, concrete statements on what the law means instead of making it purposely squishy.
It’s Texas though, unless Republicans lose power it’s unlikely that the idea of women’s lives being valuable in going to rise above the BS from the anti-abortion movement.
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Good. Sue the bastards.
The discovery on this should be interesting.
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“Both the Texas Constitution and the Federal Constitution prohibit state actors from killing their citizens,” the suit reads.
IANAL, but this statement seems to set up a loss by the defendents claiming the unborn fetus is also a citizen and was being “protected” by their actions. The fact that both “citizens” died is unfortunate, but not something there were liable for. BS, but would a Texas court buy it? Probably 
The discovery on this will not be interesting. But the chickenshit doctors and hospitals need to be taught a painfully expensive lesson about the consequences of failing to protect their patient when the statute plainly authorizes them to perform an abortion. A theoretical risk of prosecution attaches to every surgical procedure. That theoretical risk does not authorize anyone to deviate from the established standard of care.
And besides, every last one of these doctors is already practicing in a deep blue county. Ain’t no judge gonna put them on trial, and ain’t no jury ever going to convict for performing a life-saving abortion.
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Always evergreen.
“They tell you that there’s a war on women. There is no war on women — there may be a war on what’s inside of women, but there is no war on women in this country.”
— Dr. “Sleepy” Ben Carson
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