It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

  • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
    91·
    3 days ago

    I’ve known (or dated) a few conservative men who refused to get vasectomies because they “lower testosterone”. And, of course that means they’re less of a man (to themselves and others who think that way).

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      6·
      3 days ago

      Is that even true?? You still have your balls, the sperm just doesn’t have an exit route anymore. Like, biology is weird as shit, I could see that somehow causing testosterone to drop slightly for some weird ass reason, but I’ve never heard of it.

      • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
        15·
        3 days ago

        It is absolutely not true. A vasectomy cannot lower testosterone.

        Unfortunately, conservatives are opposed to science, so the research on this topic will be ignored by them.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          11·
          3 days ago

          I figured, but man, they’re always learning weird new shit about the body, lol.

          The funny thing is the dudes worried about low T don’t know T that is too high (according to your body, not according to what you want) just converts to estrogen… which you would think they would be a lot more concerned about, given their anxieties about being too feminine!

            • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
              7·
              3 days ago

              Incidentally, there’s a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome that relates to this property. For someone with AIS that has XY genes, their appearance can range from phenotypically male, to phenotypically female, and anywhere in-between. This happens because their cells don’t respond properly (or at all) to male hormones, such as testosterone. As a result, the unused testosterone gets converted into estrogen, which their cells usually can respond to. For someone with complete AIS, they are usually born and raised as female, only finding out about their condition when they get to puberty and never have a period.

              A quick note: excess estrogen can turn into testosterone, too. And yes, there is also an Estrogen Insensitivity Syndrome, but it’s extremely rare (fewer than 10 reported cases.)