All she needed, part I: A third woman dies under Texas’ abortion ban

ProPublica(The Texas Tribune ) – 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 her.Related Stories 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. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal.“You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage process to remove tissue from the uterus, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. He trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.Three hours later, her heart stopped.The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more...