Texas has manufactured a reproductive health crisis. In the case of Tierra Walker, a Texas mother who died after being denied lifesaving abortion care, a state-designed disaster has collided with the country’s Black maternal health crisis. Texas’ compounding abortion restrictions and bans lower the standard of medical care to denial, refusal, and what can only be assumed as ambivalence.
This ProPublica investigation into the deaths of pregnant people denied abortions, and the viral video of Karrie Jones’s medical neglect during childbirth exposes a vicious cycle: the maternal health crisis and the denial of abortion care are mutually reinforcing failures, systemically abandoning Black pregnant people from all sides.
Texas Stopped Reviewing Maternal Deaths
Texas’ Maternal Mortality Committee announced it would not be reviewing maternal deaths from 2022 and 2023 — the first two years since Roe v. Wade’s overturn. Committee members had suggested they skip the first two years after Texas’s abortion ban to offer more timely recommendations, but as time passes, the headlines, the stories, and deaths offer a clear picture of what abortion and Black birth advocates have known all along. Texas’s abortion bans have a chilling effect on medical care: by prioritizing the state’s standard of refusal, licensed medical professionals abandon their duty of care, with fatal consequences.
These instances attest to why advocates for Black Maternal Health have amplified a clear demand: “Listen to Me”. Over 90 doctors were consulted on Tierra Walker’s medical state, yet none provided the necessary and life-saving care that may have prevented her early demise, an abortion.
Reproductive Health Deserts and a Double Standard
In Texas, a Black Maternal Health crisis is raging across the state, and reproductive health deserts are limiting the availability and accessibility of preventative care, creating a perfect storm of preventable death.
Texas’s long-standing history of maternal health inequity makes clear that we can only speak about the care and dignity Black mothers deserve while standing beside their gravesites. We grieve Black mothers while we chariot white survivors of abortion bans from court cases to documentaries to public speaking events. I refuse to let Black mothers’ preventable deaths be in vain.
Refusing False Solutions
We can not be fooled by so-called solutions offered to us by those who manufactured this crisis. Those who currently govern know the consequences of their actions and intend to make Black mothers collateral in their quest for control. We need proper investigations to see the extent and severity of maternal deaths in Texas. We also need governance that is both rooted in care and responsive to the recommendations of Black birth and policy advocates closest to those communities most impacted by these compounding reproductive injustices.
When Tierra, already a mother to her eldest son, JJ, age 14, asked doctors to consider her life, given the co-occurring morbidities, the determination was made that her pregnancy was not in an emergency state, only her health. While parents who seek abortions have always made caring decisions in consideration of their capacity, Texas’s abortion bans now force them to confront their potential incapacitation — the risk of being unable to parent their children due to maternal death caused by abortion care denial. That is a reproductive injustice we should all refuse to accept.
raven E. Freeborn (they/them) is a full-spectrum doula, licensed social worker, and the executive director of Avow Texas. Freeborn’s work is driven by a steadfast dedication to community-led change, particularly for LGBTQ and BIPOC communities. They are deeply committed to addressing health disparities within historically marginalized populations.