Marin Wolf | The Dallas Morning News (TNS)
DALLAS — The woman knew there would be blood, but she hadn’t expected this much or for it to be bright red.
It had been nearly a day since the Surepoint Emergency Center outside of Fort Worth told her that she was miscarrying at nearly 13 weeks and sent her home with a prescription and a set of instructions.
Administer the misoprostol, a drug that helps empty the uterus, and wait, the instructions said. If it doesn’t work, take another dose. There will be a lot of blood, the doctor said, but you only need to worry if it’s scarlet instead of a rusty brown. The woman, who asked not to be named out of concern for her safety, wanted a surgical procedure to clear her uterus, but the doctor told her it wasn’t an option at the facility.
Worried by the amount of blood, the woman and her husband, Ryan Hamilton, returned to Surepoint, their 9-month-old daughter in tow. The trip was the beginning of a 24-hour race to get the woman additional abortion care while she bled until she lost consciousness on her bathroom floor.
“She started to lose a lot of blood and a lot of body fluid, to the point where it’s scary,” Hamilton said. “She’s a very strong Texas woman. She’s determined to do it. I’m not surprised she stayed in there longer than she probably should have before she passed out.”
The woman’s story, which her first husband shared on social media and with The News, is yet another example of a Texan stuck in the gray space of the state’s abortion laws that ban the procedure in all cases except to preserve the life of the mother. Her miscarriage occurred two weeks before the Texas Supreme Court ruled against several other women who sued the state because they struggled to get medical assistance for complications including conditions that lead to miscarriage, they said.
Two medical centers allegedly denied the woman a surgical abortion because her case was not considered emergent enough, Hamilton…
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