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.
