Under Texas’ Abortion Ban, Where a Pregnant Woman Lives Can Determine Her Risk of Developing Sepsis

Major Dallas hospitals empower doctors to provide abortions to patients with high-risk miscarriages.

Most in Houston do not. Most Houston hospital leaders have not heeded their doctors’ calls to change their policies.

While rates of dangerous infections spiked across Texas after it banned abortion in 2021 , women in Houston fared far worse.

Doctors offered patients with PPROM the option to end the pregnancy to protect against serious infection.

But under the state’s new abortion ban, they would no longer be allowed to do so while practicing at Parkland Memorial and UT Southwestern Medical Center .

Lawyers advised the doctors that they should offer to intervene only if they could document severe infection or bleeding.

Texas Senate passed a bill last week to clarify that doctors can terminate pregnancies if a woman faces a risk of death that is not imminent.

Texas Health and other hospitals in the region did not respond to requests for comment.

In Houston , one of America ’s most prestigious medical hubs, Dr. Judy Levison mounted her own campaign to support intervening in high-risk complications.