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Notes -
Crain is a case where a combination of clinical incompetence and what were in effect paperwork requirements (even if they required an additional scan to meet under the circumstances) for a medically necessary abortion permitted under Texas law led to lifesaving treatment being delayed with, as it turned out, fatal results. Ngumezi was straightforward malpractice - giving a pregnant woman who doesn't qualify for a medically necessary abortion abortion pills is just as illegal as doing a D&C, and more likely to have bad clinical outcomes.
In both cases, the doctors involved were subject to professional discipline. I think disciplining the Crain doctors is a bad idea, but I understand why the Texan authorities think it is a valuable face-saving measure. The message of Crain is now that if you are a doctor or hospital administrator in Texas, you should do anything you can to stop miscarrying women going anywhere near your hospital, as there is no medico-legally way of treating them. And hospitals trying to keep hard cases off the premises will lead to more Crain-type deaths.
Barnica was an entirely correct application of Texas law as it existed at the time. At the time she would have had the moribund fetus removed under non-Texan standards of care, there wasn't a life-threatening emergency - she became septic after the heartbeat stopped. Texas has since changed their law so this shouldn't happen again, although other red states have not.
Cox is something different - it was a case involving a non-viable fetus and there was never a real risk to the mother beyond the inherent risk of pregnancy. The Texas abortion law doesn't have an exception for non-viable fetuses and this is intentional on the part of the Christian pro-life movement that wrote it. Paxton's grandstanding over the case, while ghoulish, was entirely correct as a matter of Texas law, was popular with the pro-life conservative base, and probably contributed to him winning his recent Senate primary. I don't think it will be a major contributor to his losing the general to Talarico, although it should be.
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