The story of another woman affected by the strict Texas abortion ban is being told. A teen who was six months pregnant lost her life due to preventable illness while pregnant. As a result, her family is sharing what happened to her to illustrate how deadly the abortion ban is. They are also trying to mount a lawsuit to fight for her.
Under the abortion ban in Texas, doctors can only medically intervene if they can’t detect a fetal heartbeat. Even if a woman is having a miscarriage, they must wait before they can receive treatment. And because of this, some women, including the teen, have died.
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The teen was celebrating her baby shower when things started to go wrong.
Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year-old from Texas, woke up on October 23, 2023, the day of her baby shower, feeling ill, ProPublica reports. First, it started with a headache, and then a fever, nausea, and vomiting began. While she pushed through to attend her baby shower, her family took the teen, who was six months pregnant, to the hospital around 3 p.m.
Her boyfriend, Randall Broussard, drove her to the nearby hospital, and they sat in the waiting room for four hours. Staff apparently gave her a plastic pan to throw up in. Even though she was experiencing abdominal pain, her pregnancy was never evaluated. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with strep throat, giving her antibiotics before discharging her.
She then went to a different hospital.
In the middle of the night, Crain woke up her mother, Candace Fails. She said she had stomach pains. Fails took her daughter to a different hospital. An OB-GYN reported that she had a 102.8-degree fever and a high pulse. Crain was also showing signs of sepsis.
Crain was given IV fluids and more antibiotics for two hours, but she didn’t improve. Doctors found that in addition to strep, she had a urinary tract infection.
This time, a nurse checked that her baby had a heartbeat. She was given more antibiotics, and discharged again. Fails shared that her daughter had to be taken out of the hospital in a wheelchair. “It’s bulls—,” she said.
Things were about to get so much worse.
By the next morning, Crain was crying out in pain and experiencing heavy bleeding. Her family rushed her to the hospital yet again. She was having a miscarriage. Doctors gave her more IV antibiotics, and the OB-GYN on duty reported that they couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat. According to Fails, a half hour later, she noticed that the teen’s thighs were covered with blood.
“Do something,” Fails begged.
Eventually, doctors did a second ultrasound to “confirm fetal demise,” more than two hours after she arrived at the hospital. Because of “extreme pain,” Crain couldn’t sign release forms, so Fails signed them quickly to allow her daughter to undergo an “unplanned dilation and curettage” or “unplanned cesarean section.”
At that point, doctors deemed the procedure too dangerous, according to medical records obtained by ProPublica. There was suspected internal bleeding as a result of a dangerous side effect of sepsis, called disseminated intravascular coagulation.
Time was running out.
Fails told the outlet that it seemed like doctors were more worried about finding a fetal heartbeat than they were about her daughter.
“I know it sounds selfish, and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose, I would have chosen my daughter,” Fails admitted.
As her teen was in a hospital bed with black blood coming out of her nose and mouth, Fails tried to hide her panic. “You’re strong, Nevaeh,” she told her daughter. “God made us strong.”
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Candace Fails is trying to find a lawyer to sue the hospital.
Nevaeh Crain died in the hospital’s intensive care unit, along with her daughter, Lillian. According to the multiple medical professionals ProPublica spoke with about Crain’s case, the teen might have lived if she had been given proper medical treatment.
Fails told the outlet that she had met with medical malpractice lawyers to hold the hospitals accountable for her daughter’s death. But according to Texas laws, plaintiffs must prove “willful and wanton negligence” by hospitals in emergency care cases. According to the article, Fails has been unable to find a lawyer to take her case.
