Her name is Porsha Ngumezi. She was 35 years old when a Texas doctor chose not to perform a routine D&C when she miscarried because the procedure can also be used to end pregnancies. She died as a result.
From ProPublica:
Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”
Hope [Porsha’s husband] dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.
But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.
Three hours later, her heart stopped.
The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.
Why didn’t the hospital perform the D&C? Because doctors are afraid they could be criminally charged. Under Texas’ abortion ban, a doctor faces up to 99 years in prison for violating it.
More from ProPublica:
Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.
The article goes on to document other cases, similar to Porsha’s, in which a D&C was clearly the standard of care but not performed. ProPublica noted, “Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.”
If Texas lawmakers were really pro-life, they would immediately and drastically revamp their laws that are literally killing women and infants. Instead, they are sweeping those deaths under the rug.
Thank God ProPublica is shining lights on them now.