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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   22936 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Uh, just realized that the 'days later' bit might have come across as more conspiratorial than the statistics argument I intended, so to spell the statistics out, as far as I can tell, Texas alone has somewhere on the order of 2k second-trimester miscarriages every year, Fermi estimate of a hundred-plus high-risk cases (ruptured membrane or extremely premature labor with a live-but-doomed fetus), you'd expect a couple deaths a year in Texas alone, and tens of cases with gruesome near-death experiences or permanent physical harm. Across all states with second-trimester bans, you'd expects tens of deaths and hundreds of cases. Not every one of those is going to consent to public news coverage, and presumably ProPublica is doing at least some filtering to remove the most arguable cases. It's only weak information, rather than strong. It's still information.

To return to conspiracy, though, I do want to spell out exactly how poorly the cases ProPublica and company does provide do look with a skeptical eye. Walker is one of the most recent, and she died in October 2024, and the story ProPublica offers is terrifying: "Although one doctor documented in her medical record that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death,” she was told over and over again that she didn’t need to worry, her relatives say. More than 90 doctors were involved in Walker’s care, but not one offered her the option to end her pregnancy, according to medical records."

I have another quote, though. Texas's Supreme Court held, in May 2024 :

As our Court recently held, the law does not require that a woman’s death be imminent or that she first suffer physical impairment. Rather, Texas law permits a physician to address the risk that a life-threatening condition poses before a woman suffers the consequences of that risk. A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.

and :

Rather, in an enforcement action under the Human Life Protection Act, the burden is the State’s to prove that no reasonable physician would have concluded that the mother had a life-threatening physical condition that placed her at risk of death or of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion was performed. [ed: emphasis in original]

The state's highest court had ruled, without caveat, almost five months before Walker's death. The doctors and the hospital still acted without urgency.

Even by ProPublica's own analysis, this ended up driven heavily by hospital policy in the state with the ban. Notably, Paxton has not arrested, charged, or seriously threatened a single one of the Dallas hospitals or practitioners that ProPublica praises.

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