Under the Texas abortion ban, a woman went into sepsis before doctors would treat her and nearly died, lawsuit says

• Amanda Zurawaski is one of five women suing Texas over the state's abortion ban.
• She said she was denied treatment for an unviable pregnancy and nearly died, according to the lawsuit.
• The lawsuit said she lost one fallopian tube and will now have a hard time getting pregnant.

A 35-year-old Texas woman said she had long dreamed of having children with her husband and was thrilled — after a year and a half of trying to conceive through fertility treatments — to learn she was pregnant.

But five weeks into her second trimester, Amanda Zurawaski was told her pregnancy was not viable. Doctors in Texas could not provide any treatment under the state's abortion law, and Zurawaski nearly died as a result, according to a lawsuit she and four other women filed against the state.

The women are asking a state court to clarify Texas' near-total abortion ban to say that doctors should make the final determination about whether women need medically necessary abortion care. 

Zurawaski said she was denied care because doctors at her hospital were worried about breaking the law.

Zurawaski's water broke on a Tuesday night but she was forced to wait until her body naturally delivered the baby, who had died, on that Friday, according to the lawsuit. By then her body went into septic shock, the lawsuit said.

She now has permanent scar tissue as a result of infections she developed and will have trouble getting pregnant again, according to the lawsuit filed in District Court in Travis County, Texas.

"Amanda spent three days in the ICU while her infection was treated. Amanda's family flew to Austin from across the country because they worried it would be the last time they would see her," the complaint says. "Amanda was eventually discharged and returned home, but her suffering was far from over."

Texas was the first state to implement a near-total abortion ban in September 2021.

The law includes limited exceptions for medical emergencies but provides little clarity about what constitutes an emergency, according to the suit. 

The lawsuit was brought against Texas by The Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Zurawaski, four other women who underwent similar trauma and illness while pregnant, and two doctors.

Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Medical Board executive director Stephen Brint Carlton were also named as defendants in the case.

In a statement to Insider, Paxton's office said he is "committed to doing everything in his power to protect mothers, families, and unborn children, and he will continue to defend and enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature." 

The office also sent Insider a "guidance letter" on the Texas law, which says the law prohibits the performing, inducing, or attempting of an abortion unless the mother has "a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places [her] at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced." 

The letter goes on to say that the term "abortion" doesn't apply when these acts are done to "(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child; (B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or (C) remove an ectopic pregnancy." 

It does not address cases where a nonviable pregnancy — where the fetus still has cardiac activity — is threatening the life of the mother.

The Texas Medical Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The hospital was scared to violate the abortion ban, the lawsuit says

Zurawaski underwent exploratory procedures, used multiple medications, received one misdiagnosis, and was treated with intrauterine insemination before she finally got pregnant for the first time, according to the lawsuit. 

The pregnancy was normal until she was diagnosed with an "incompetent cervix" at 17 weeks and 6 days, according to the lawsuit. That's when medical providers told her the pregnancy was not viable. 

Having tried so hard to get pregnant in the first place, she and her husband asked if there was anything they could do to save it — even if it meant undergoing a procedure to stitch her cervix closed to prevent preterm birth. The doctor said even that wouldn't work. 

When she went home that day, her water broke. 

Amanda returned to the emergency room that night and was diagnosed with preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes and was kept overnight in hopes that she would go into labor on her own.

In the morning, she still hadn't gone into labor and the fetus still had cardiac activity, so she was sent home.

"Amanda was told that under Texas's abortion ban, there was no other medical care the hospital could provide," the suit says. "At this point, absent Texas's abortion bans, a patient in Amanda's situation would have been offered an abortion or transferred to a facility that could offer the procedure."

Amanda wasn't offered either "because the hospital was concerned that providing an abortion without signs of acute infection" would be in violation of the abortion ban, the lawsuit says.

The closest clinic where she could get the necessary treatment — an abortion — was 11 hours away in New Mexico, and she needed to stay within 15 minutes of the hospital in case her health declined, the suit says.

For the next two days Zurawaski stayed home, "grieving her inevitable loss and worrying about her own health," the lawsuit says.

On Friday, after a check-up showed her vitals were stable, her health deteriorated. 

She developed chills and started shivering, her fever began to spike, and she did not respond to her husband's questions, according to the lawsuit. At the emergency room, she was admitted to the labor and delivery unit. With her temperature now at 103.2 degrees and confirmed to be in sepsis, her medical team agreed she was sick enough that they could induce her labor without violating the abortion ban.

The baby, whom she named Willow, died, according to the lawsuit.

Zurawaski then developed a second infection and went into septic shock, resulting in a three-day ICU stay. After being released she underwent a procedure to remove severe scar tissue from her uterus and one fallopian tube — while the other remains permanently closed, the suit says. 

Her medical team told her that in order to get pregnant again, she should undergo IVF treatments, which she had already started by the time the lawsuit was filed on February 6.

"Amanda and her husband have been trying to have children for years, and she not only lost her first pregnancy, but because of Texas's abortion bans, she nearly lost her own life and spent days in the ICU for septic infections whose lasting impacts threaten her fertility and, at a minimum, make it more difficult, if not impossible, to get pregnant again in the future," the suit says.