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This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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Tierra Walker had reached her limit. In the weeks since she’d learned she was pregnant, the 37-year-old dental assistant had been wracked by unexplained seizures and mostly confined to a hospital cot. With soaring blood pressure and diabetes, she knew she was at high risk of developing preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that could end her life.

Her mind was made up on the morning of Oct. 14, 2024: For the sake of her 14-year-old son, JJ, she needed to ask her doctor for an abortion to protect her health.

“Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?” she asked a physician at Methodist Hospital Northeast near San Antonio, according to her aunt. Just a few years earlier, Walker had developed a dangerous case of preeclampsia that had led to the stillbirth of her twins.

But the doctor, her family said, told her what many other medical providers would say in the weeks that followed: There was no emergency; nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, only her health.

Just after Christmas, on his birthday, JJ found his mom draped over her bed, lifeless. An autopsy would later confirm what she had feared: Preeclampsia killed her at 20 weeks pregnant.

Walker’s death is one of multiple cases ProPublica is investigating in which women with underlying health conditions died after they were unable to end their pregnancies.

Walker had known that abortion was illegal in Texas, but she had thought that hospitals could make an exception for patients like her, whose health was at risk.

The reality: In states that ban abortion, patients with chronic conditions and other high-risk pregnancies often have nowhere to turn.

They enter pregnancy sick and are expected to get sicker. Yet lawmakers who wrote the bans have refused to create exceptions for health risks. As a result, many hospitals and doctors, facing the threat of criminal charges, no longer offer these patients terminations, ProPublica found in interviews with more than 100 OB-GYNs across the country. Instead, these women are left to gamble with their lives.

As Walker’s blood pressure swung wildly and a blood clot threatened to kill her, she continued to press doctors at prenatal appointments and emergency room visits, asking if it was safe for her to continue the pregnancy. Although one doctor documented in her medical record that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death,” she was told over and over again that she didn’t need to worry, her relatives say. More than 90 doctors were involved in Walker’s care, but not one offered her the option to end her pregnancy, according to medical records.

Walker’s case unfolded during the fall of 2024, when the dangers of abortion bans were a focus of protests, media coverage and electoral campaigns across the country. ProPublica had revealed that five women — three in Texas alone — had died after they were unable to access standard reproductive care under the new bans.

ProPublica condensed more than 6,500 pages of Walker’s medical records into a summary of her care with the guidance of two high-risk pregnancy specialists. More than a dozen OB-GYNs reviewed the case for ProPublica and said that since Walker had persistently high blood pressure, it would have been standard medical practice to advise her of the serious risks of her pregnancy early on, to revisit the conversation as new complications emerged and to offer termination at any point if she wanted it. Some described her condition as a “ticking time bomb.” Had Walker ended her pregnancy, every expert believed, she would not have died.

Many said that her case illustrated why they think all patients need the freedom to choose how much risk they are willing to take during pregnancy. Walker expressed that she didn’t want to take that risk, her family says. She had a vibrant life, a husband and son whom she loved.

Under Texas’ abortion law, though, that didn’t matter.

On a hot September day, Walker was lying down with JJ after a walk with their two small dogs, Milo and Twinkie, when she started shaking uncontrollably.

Terrified, JJ called 911, asking for an ambulance.

As the only child of a single mom, JJ had always........

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