Published

April 20, 2026

AUSTIN — Texas Alliance for Life welcomes the Texas Medical Board’s recent disciplinary actions against three physicians who failed to provide timely, lawful care to two pregnant women who experienced life-threatening medical emergencies. Both women, Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain, tragically died. Texas law has always permitted doctors to deliver the standard of care necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. The Board’s decisions reinforce that doctors can, and must, be held accountable when they delay or withhold care that the law explicitly allows.

ProPublica previously published stories blaming these deaths on Texas’s pro-life laws. Those claims were false. Texas’s statutes have long included clear exceptions for the life and health of the mother, and those exceptions do not require the threat to be imminent. The Texas Medical Board’s findings confirm what we have consistently stated: the law was not the problem. The failure was in the delayed application of care that Texas law already permitted.

“The deaths of Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain were heartbreaking tragedies that should not have occurred,” said Amy O’Donnell, Executive Director of Texas Alliance for Life. “Texas pro-life laws have always allowed physicians to act swiftly using their reasonable medical judgment to save a mother’s life or protect her from serious bodily harm. These doctors had the legal authority and medical duty to intervene. The Board’s actions show the shortcoming was not in the statute, but in its execution.”

Background:

Texas pro-life laws explicitly allow medically necessary abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk. That exception existed before and after the Dobbs decision.

• The Texas Human Life Protection Act (HB 1280) which took effect following the 2022 Dobbs decision and protects the lives of unborn children from the moment of conception, includes an exception when, in the “reasonable medical judgment” of the physician, a pregnancy causes a life-threatening physical condition that places the mother at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.
• On May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Zurawski v. Texas, affirmed that the medical necessity exception in the Human Life Protection Act is both constitutional and clear, and that physicians may use reasonable medical judgment to determine whether an intervention to save a mother’s life from a threat arising during pregnancy is warranted.
• The Texas Medical Board rules released in June 2024 explained that the threat to the mother’s life or health need not be imminent, a point that Texas Alliance for Life advocated for during the rulemaking process as a participating stakeholder.
• In the 89th legislative session, SB 31, the Life of the Mother Act, authored by Sen. Bryan Hughes and Rep. Charlie Geren, was signed into law to ensure physicians and hospital attorneys receive Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Legal Education on how the medical necessity exception works in practice. SB 31 also harmonized the medical exception language across Texas’ pro-life statutes, ensuring consistency throughout the law.
• Texas Health and Human Services provides abortion numbers through the Texas Induced Terminations of Pregnancy Statistics. The number of procedures documented as due to “Emergency/Health of Woman” continues to show that our laws are working as intended to save mothers’ lives when necessary.

Texas Alliance for Life will continue to advocate for laws and policies that protect both mothers and their unborn children, and to ensure that physicians understand and apply the full scope of care Texas law allows.

CONTACT:

Ashley Sosa, Director of Communications

Ashley@texasallianceforlife.org

512-477-1244 (o)

 

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