A Texas woman died after not receiving proper medical care for a miscarriage due to the state’s strict abortion ban — the 5th case that ProPublica has reported where a death occurred as a direct result of the overturn Roe v. Wade.
On June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two, suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks pregnant and was experiencing heavy bleeding. Nurses reported that she was “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”
According to the outlet, she bled so much over six hours that she required two blood transfusions in the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital.
Porsha’s husband, Hope Ngumezi, called his mother, a former physician, and she told the couple that Porsha needed a dilation and curettage procedure (D&C).
Dilation and curettage is a surgical procedure where the cervix is dilated and an instrument called a curette is used to suction or scrape the uterine lining, removing the baby from inside the uterus. D&C is done during the first trimester for miscarriages and abortions.
Despite the advice from his mother, Hope and Porsha were told by their doctor that the hospital’s “routine” was to provide a drug called misoprostol to help her body fully miscarry.
“The mindset I had that day was, ‘They’re the experts, right?’ I know they have seen miscarriages many times, so they are well equipped to know what to do,” Hope told KVUE.
However, Porsha died three hours later.
“It could have been prevented,” Hope added. “It felt like everyone turned their backs on us during that day.”
ProPublica reported that dozens of doctors reviewed Porsha’s case and agreed that her case was preventable. Experts claim that misoprostol is too risky to use when the mother is experiencing such heavy bleeding, and a D&C should have been performed.
“Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health, told the outlet. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.”
The medical examiner for the case found that Porsha’s cause of death was hemorrhage.
The near-total ban on abortion in Texasstates that doctors cannot perform the procedure unless the mother’s life is deemed at risk. Any doctors who violate the law face up to 99 years in prison, which has led to many medical professionals to avoid the D&C even in cases of miscarriage, out of fear of punishment.
“Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston, ProPublica reports. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.”
Dr. Gabrielle Taper, an OB-GYN in Austin, added that after the state abortion went into effect, “There was much more hesitation about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?”
Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital declined to comment on Porsha’s treatment and noted that “each patient’s care is unique to that individual.”
“All Houston Methodist hospitals follow all state laws, including the abortion law in place in Texas,” a spokesperson for the hospital told the outlet.
Hope said he feels a lot of anger knowing laws impacted his wife’s care. Now, his children have no mother.
“Kids were young at that time, they were 3 and 5,” he told KVUE. “They just barely started life. And now they gotta go through life without their mom.”
