Josseli Barnica was 28 when she died of sepsis in Texas in 2021. Her autopsy lists sepsis with retained products of conception, meaning tissue from the pregnancy that remained after her miscarriage. Medical records show she was told it would be a crime to intervene because the fetus still had a heartbeat, even though her miscarriage was already in progress. Her care was delayed more than 40 hours. More than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica her death was preventable.
Nevaeh Crain was 18. She miscarried on the day of her baby shower in 2023, developed sepsis, and was turned away from hospitals before she died. It took 20 hours and three emergency room visits before doctors admitted her.
I can’t tell you how either woman voted. I can tell you that someone like them is the person I worry about: a woman who sits in a pew, votes to make abortion nearly impossible to get, and later finds herself on the other side of that law while her body does something completely natural. If you think that scenario is hypothetical, these two cases show otherwise. Miscarriages fall into a gray area under Texas law, which prohibits doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.
The pattern shows up in the numbers too. ProPublica found that the rate of sepsis among women hospitalized for second-trimester pregnancy loss in Texas rose more than 50% after the state’s first abortion ban took effect. Before the ban, the rate had been fairly steady.
Supporters of the law answer that exceptions to save a mother’s life were always part of it. The bill’s sponsor said every pro-life law Texas has passed recognizes that exception. That is true on paper. But doctors said the language of the exception wasn’t clear enough, and left them unsure what qualifies as an emergency and when they can legally act. Texas responded in 2025 with the Life of the Mother Act. Groups like Texas Right to Life supported it. That is meaningful progress, and it was bipartisan. But some Texas OB-GYNs still say the exception is too vague. When the penalty for guessing wrong is prison, doctors wait. And in a miscarriage with infection, waiting is dangerous.
So why would a woman vote for this? I don’t think it’s because she doesn’t care about her own health. Women’s views on abortion track with faith and political party more than gender. In a January 2026 Pew survey, 64% of women said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as did 55% of men. But 74% of white evangelical Protestants said it should be illegal in all or most cases. An earlier Pew analysis found men and women largely aligned within each party. A woman’s vote is shaped by what her church and her community teach, and many of these women act out of sincere conviction.
Religion becomes a weapon. The teaching presents a fertilized egg as a person from the moment of conception. That doctrine is much newer than most believers are told. It is absent from the words of Jesus. Jewish tradition treated the fetus as part of the mother. And it hasn’t been the view of most religious Americans. 82% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 68% of Black Protestants, 63% of white nonevangelical Protestants, and 57% of Catholics. So the faithful don’t agree. One interpretation, held by one slice of one religion, has been written into law for everyone.
And what is left out of that teaching is the part about miscarriage. The woman in the congregation is not told how common pregnancy loss is, or that the law she is asked to support can turn a routine medical event into a delayed emergency. If the movement wants her vote, she deserves to know what she’s voting for.
The second thing she deserves is privacy. Women are roughly half the country, yet our most private medical decisions are treated as public business. In 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to block a federal rule that shields the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortions, arguing it weakens Texas’s ability to investigate. It is unclear whether Texas has sought such records. Medical privacy is a basic dignity, and we shouldn’t be asked to give it up to prove we aren’t criminals.
This post isn’t an attack on faith. It is a refusal to let one reading of scripture decide whether a woman gets treated in time. If your religion tells you abortion is wrong, that is yours to follow. It is not yours to impose on a woman waiting in a hospital for a heartbeat to stop, while an infection spreads.
Women deserve the procedures they need to live healthy lives, decided between them and their doctors. A free society doesn’t hand that decision to a congregation.
