SUGAR LAND, Texas — For the third time in less than a month, ProPublica has published a report on the death of a Texas woman as a result of the state's abortion ban.
On Oct. 30, the publication shared the story of Josseli Barnica, who died after a hospital told her it would be a crime to intervene in her miscarriage. One day later, ProPublica shared the story of 18-year-old Neveah Crain, who died after she tried to get care in three visits to emergency rooms.
Now, the publication is telling the story of a 35-year-old mother of two Porsha Ngumezi, who died after suffering a miscarriage at 11 weeks.
Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, ProPublica reports that Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she needed two transfusions. Nurses notes show she was "passing large clots the size of grapefruit."
Her husband, Hope Ngumezi, called his mother, a former physician, who said his wife needed a D&C, or 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," the report states.
But when the obstetrician on duty finally arrived, Hope Ngumezi recalled that he told them it was the hospital's "routine" to give women a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue. Records show Porsha Ngumezi took the pills, and the bleeding continued.
Three hours later, she died.
Dozens of doctors who reviewed a summary of her case for ProPublica say her death was preventable, with some saying 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."
Medical experts told ProPublica it was clear Porsha Ngumezi needed an emergency D&C because she was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, putting her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding.
ProPublica reports that D&Cs are a staple of maternal health care and can be lifesaving, but because the procedure is also used to end pregnancies, it has become tangled up in legislation that restricts abortions.
"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," the report states.
"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," the report continues. "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."
To learn more about Ngumezi's story, read ProPublica's full report.
