Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
This is the future the Republicans want.
But also the present that Republicans have forced upon us.
It’s the present in multiple states. It’s the future they want for the entire country.
And the present the current government is also fine with.
Hate to be that guy, but it is also the present (hopefully not future) the Democrats have allowed Republicans to build:
Bill Clinton promised to codify Roe v. Wade into law. He didn’t.
Obama promised to codify Roe v. Wade into law. He didn’t despite having a super-majority in his first two years.
Biden promised to codify Roe v. Wade into law and didn’t. The Dobbs decision was taken in June 2022, so before the midterms when Democrats still had a simple majority in the house and a tie + VP in the senate. When there were rumors/leaks a month or so before the decision that the USSC would take that decision soon. Again: Inaction.
Yes, they had many chances and failed. But these new laws are NOT anyone’s fault but republicans.
They didn’t fail. They didn’t even try. Not even with a super-majority.
I am sick of such important issues like health of people, let alone half the population, being used as mere strategic play. So please push them to do the right thing, after they’re elected. They don’t seem to respond without pressure.
I’m sure you’re more politically astute than Obama or Pelosi but even with a supermajority Roe v. Wade wasn’t predicted to be murdered under the administration of a russian plant who spiked FBI investigations into the corrupt justices the republiQan controlled Senate waved through after they lied and claimed they though of Roe as settled law.
Democrats are absolutely to blame for not fighting harder, absolutely, but overturning Roe was not supposed to get any support much less 75% of all republiQan women who have had multiple opportunities to oppose it and do not. If one is to legislate like one should many, many, many things would need to change.
My point being it’s not as simple as you make it. And when people jump to “yeah but Democrats are to blame” I know we’re usually already in Bad Faithville. Both Sides and all that. NO.
Just no. This is not about both sides in any shape way or form. This is about agency. Fact is: There were ways to do this and the last three Democratic presidents (including the sitting president) have campaigned and outlined plans to codify it into law and didn’t. Yes it may have taken people by surprise that the country and the world is regressing as early and fast as it is, but that doesn’t take away agency, especially when they didn’t even try to spring to action after mere lip service to garner votes.
The thing is: The conservative, religious right, openly formulated and has been following their plan of judicial activism for decades. The lower courts haven’t become this biased towards Republican policy over night. It was due to bad luck, bad faith acting of McConnel and the other Republican senators and stubberness of some involved people on the other side of the aisle that Trump was able to nominate this many people to the USSC. It would have happened at some point.
Reagan gets the blame for 9/11 by not passing Federal laws that help to keep hijackers off of planes.