Josseli Barnica was 28 years old. She had a young daughter and a wanted pregnancy when she suffered a miscarriage that led to her death due to restrictive anti-abortion laws in Texas. According to ProPublica, doctors decided not to intervene to remove the 17-week-old fetus, requiring Josseli "to wait to deliver until there was no detectable fetal heartbeat."
This death exemplifies why accessing abortion is part of the right to health care and why apps like Aya Contigo, which offers free information and accompaniment through the abortion process, exist. A necessary resource, which can save lives in states where abortion is prohibited.
How Aya Contigo makes a difference: a true user story
Aya Contigo's Care Team recently supported a woman from one of the southern states where abortion is banned. She had foul-smelling vaginal bleeding and was 8 weeks pregnant. She said she did not feel well, so she went to the hospital, but there they dismissed the symptoms and told her to go to the gynecologist because "she was fine and they were normal signs of pregnancy."
"I felt bad because I didn't want to lose the pregnancy, but now I'm only concerned about my well-being," the woman told our team. She said she knew she had miscarried, and had gone to a clinic, but had been told they couldn't give her anything, that everything would work itself out.
But she didn't know what to do: "I'm just looking for a safe place," she said. She tried contacting an abortion hotline but they weren’t available, so she reached out to us, where we accompanied her remotely until she got a gynecological appointment for treatment.
Thanks to the support of Aya Contigo, this person had the guidance and accompaniment while she accessed the medical care she needed, and received the validation she was looking for. Still, there are cases like Josseli Barnica's where the person cannot access the resources that could save her life.
The inaccuracies in the law surrounding Josseli Barnica's case
Josseli's case occurred in September 2021 in Texas, just a week after the law that prohibits doctors from performing abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected went into effect.
According to testimonies collected by various media, the inaccuracies in the wording of the law mean that doctors are not well-defined when they can legally intervene and this endangers the lives of pregnant women.
Under Texas law, abortion is a crime. It is only allowed to save a person's life and to prevent a serious health risk, but these two exceptions are difficult to pin down in practice, which can delay or deny access to medical care.
The standard procedure when an abortion is in progress is to hasten expulsion and empty the uterus to prevent life-threatening infection. But Josseli had to spend 40 hours with the fetus stuck in her cervix, which was open and therefore prone to bacteria entering her body, and within three days she died of sepsis, a tragic event that could be preventable.
Latinas at risk
Josseli was also a Honduran migrant. Forty-three percent of all Latinas between the ages of 15 and 49 in the United States live in states where abortion is restricted, and face multiple barriers to accessing health care, including lack of health insurance and economic hardship. For these folks, Aya Contigo can support and make a vital difference.
Precisely, access to abortion was one of the decisive issues in these presidential elections, in which initiatives to protect abortion were also voted on in 10 states: Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Florida, and South Dakota, while in Nebraska it was decided between two opposing laws, one that would establish the right to abortion up to fetal viability, which is 23 weeks, and another that would enshrine abortion restrictions in the state constitution.
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