TEXAS, USA — The Texas committee that investigates pregnancy-related deaths is facing more pressure to review deaths from 2022 and 2023 – the years just after the state’s abortion ban took effect.
Federal lawmakers are raising concerns about the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee’s (MMMRC) plan to not review deaths from those years. The committee says it plans to skip those years so its members can focus on more current data.
But this week, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and three other lawmakers sent a letter to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), questioning that plan. The lawmakers say the state is “intentionally restricting evidence” of the effects of the abortion ban, and the letter specifically mentions the deaths of three Texas women who suffered pregnancy complications but were denied abortion-related care.
Joselli Barnica died in 2021 after a hospital told her it would be a crime to intervene in her miscarriage. In 2023, 18-year-old Neveah Crain suffered a miscarriage and developed sepsis, but was denied emergency care at three hospitals before her death. That same year, Porsha Ngumezi had a miscarriage and needed an emergency procedure, but because that same procedure is used to end pregnancies, she didn’t get receive it and she died.
In a press release on Thursday, Crockett wrote, “Texas Republicans know there is nothing ‘pro-life’ about the stories of these women and the broken families they leave behind … The people of Texas deserve the truth.”
Crockett also noted that over the past two decades, maternal deaths – “particularly in Texas and other states with severe restrictions on abortion care” – have risen. The most recent MMMRC reports show that in 2020, the number of women in Texas who experienced a pregnancy-related death “rose sharply to the highest numbers since Texas began tracking maternal deaths in 2013.”
Crockett and U.S. Reps. Jamie Raskin, Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee are asking the MMMCRC to formally brief them on why it is skipping those reviews by Jan. 2.