A Texas Woman Nearly Died Because She Couldn T Get An Abortion

  Another woman gave the harrowing details of how the Supreme Court’s decision four months ago to overturn Roe v. Wade put her life in danger.   

  CNN has told the stories of several women – including one from Houston, one from Central Texas and one from Cleveland – and what they had to do to obtain medically necessary abortions.   

  Now, a woman from Austin, Texas, has come forward because she nearly died when she couldn’t get an early abortion.   

  This is her story.   

  Amanda Eid and Josh Zurawski, both now 35, met in 1991 at Aldersgate Academy Kindergarten in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and dated in high school.   

  “Josh has always told me he’s been in love with me since we were 4 years old,” Amanda said.   

  Three years ago, they married in Austin, Texas, where they both work in high-tech jobs.   

  They tried to start a family but failed.  Amanda underwent fertility treatments for a year and a half and finally got pregnant.   

  “So excited to share that Baby Zurawski is due at the end of January,” Amanda shared on Instagram in July.  The post included a photo of her and her husband in ‘Mama’ and ‘Dad’ hats, while Amanda held up a strip of ultrasound photos of their baby girl.   

  “The fact that we were pregnant was a miracle and we were beside ourselves with happiness,” she said.   

  But then, 18 weeks – just four months – into her pregnancy, Amanda’s water broke.   

  The amniotic fluid her baby depended on was leaking.  She says the doctor told her the baby wouldn’t survive.   

  “We found out we were going to lose our baby,” Amanda said.  “My cervix was fully dilated 22 weeks premature and I was inevitably going to miscarry.”   

  She and Josh begged the doctor to see if there was a way to save the baby.   

  “I just kept asking, ‘isn’t there anything we can do?’  And the answer was no, Amanda said.   

  When a woman’s water breaks, she is at high risk for a life-threatening infection.  While Amanda and Josh’s baby – they named her Willow – was certain to die, she still had a heartbeat, so doctors said that under Texas law, they could not terminate the pregnancy.   

  “My doctor said, ‘Well, right now we just have to wait, because we can’t induce labor, even though you’re 100 percent going to lose your baby,'” Amanda said.  “[The doctors] they couldn’t do their own business because of the way the laws are written in Texas.”   

  Texas law allows abortion if the mother “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or resulting from a pregnancy that places the woman at risk of death or places the woman at serious risk of significant impairment of an important bodily function.”   

  But Texas lawmakers haven’t spelled out exactly what that means, and a doctor found violating the law could face losing his medical license and possible life in prison.   

  “They are extremely vague,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and Law Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center.  “They do not specify precisely the circumstances in which an abortion can be performed.”   

  In September, CNN contacted 28 Texas lawmakers who supported anti-abortion legislation, asking them to respond to CNN’s stories about the woman in Houston and the woman in central Texas.   

  Only one lawmaker responded.   

  “Like any other law, there are unintended consequences.  We don’t want to see any unintended consequences.  if we do, it is our responsibility as lawmakers to correct these flaws,” wrote state Sen. Eddie Lucio, who will retire from the Senate at the end of the year.   

  The Zurafskys were in an ad for Beto O’Rourke’s failed gubernatorial campaign in Texas.   

  After her water broke, Amanda’s doctors sent her home and told her to watch for signs of infection and that only when she was “considered sick enough to be life-threatening” would they terminate the pregnancy, Amanda said.   

  “The doctor told me it could take hours, days, weeks,” she recalls.   

   Once they heard “hours,” they decided there was no time to travel to another state for an abortion.   

  “The nearest ‘haven’ state is at least an eight-hour drive,” Amanda wrote in an online essay in The Meteor.  “Developing rot – which can kill quickly – in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence.”   

  So they were waiting for it in Texas.   

  On August 26, three days after her water broke, Amanda was found shivering in the Texas heat.   

  “We had a heat wave, I think it was 105 degrees that day, and I was freezing, and I was shaking, my teeth were chattering.  I was trying to tell Josh I wasn’t feeling well and my teeth were grinding so hard I couldn’t even get the sentence out,’ she said.   

  Josh was shocked by his wife’s condition.   

  “To see in a matter of maybe five minutes, go from a normal temperature to the state he was in was really, really scary,” he said.  “Too fast, it went down too, too fast.  She was in a state I’ve never seen before.”   

  Josh rushed his wife to the hospital.  Her temperature was 102 degrees.  She was too weak to walk on her own.   

  Her temperature rose to 103 degrees.  Finally, Amanda was sick enough that doctors felt it was legally safe to terminate the pregnancy, she said.   

  But Amanda was so sick that antibiotics wouldn’t stop the bacterial infection raging in her body.  Not even a blood transfusion cured her.   

  About 12 hours after her pregnancy was terminated, doctors and nurses flooded her room.   

  “There’s a lot of commotion and I said, ‘what’s going on?’  and they said, “we’re taking you to the ICU” and I said “why?”  and they said, ‘you’re showing symptoms of rot,'” he said.   

  Sepsis, the body’s extreme reaction to an infection, is a life-threatening medical emergency.   

  Amanda’s blood pressure plummeted.  Her platelets dropped.  He doesn’t remember much from that time.   

  But Josh does.   

  “It was really scary to see Amanda crash,” he said.  “I was really afraid I was going to lose her.”   

  Family members flew in from across the country because they feared it would be the last time they would see Amanda.   

  Doctors inserted an IV line near her heart to give her antibiotics and drugs to stabilize her blood pressure.  Eventually, Amanda turned the corner and survived.   

  But her medical ordeal is not over.   

  Amanda’s uterus was scarred by the infection and may not be able to bear more children.  He recently had surgery to fix the scars, but it’s unclear if it will be successful.   

  That leaves the Zurafskys scared — and furious that they may never have a family because of a Texas law.   

  “[This] it shouldn’t have happened,” Amanda said.  “That’s what’s so infuriating about all of this, is that we didn’t have to — we didn’t have to — go through all that trauma.”   

  The Zurafskys say the politicians who voted for the anti-abortion law call themselves “pro-life” — but they don’t see it that way.   

  “Amanda almost died.  This is not pro-life.  Amanda will have challenges in the future having more children.  This is not pro-life,” Josh said.   

  “Nothing for [this] feels pro-life,” his wife added.   

  In many ways, Amanda feels lucky.  She wonders if she would be alive today if it weren’t for her husband, who rushed her to the hospital and made sure she received the best possible care.  And they have good jobs with good health insurance and live in a big city with high quality health care.   

  “I had all that going for me, and yet, this was the result,” he said.   

  She and Josh are concerned about women in rural areas, poor women or young, single mothers in states like Texas.  What would happen to them, considering what happened to Amanda?   

  “These barbaric laws prevented her from getting any amount of health care when she needed it until she was in a life-threatening moment,” Josh said.   

title: “A Texas Woman Nearly Died Because She Couldn T Get An Abortion " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Leon Dale”

  Another woman gave the harrowing details of how the Supreme Court’s decision four months ago to overturn Roe v. Wade put her life in danger.   

  CNN has told the stories of several women – including one from Houston, one from Central Texas and one from Cleveland – and what they had to do to obtain medically necessary abortions.   

  Now, a woman from Austin, Texas, has come forward because she nearly died when she couldn’t get an early abortion.   

  This is her story.   

  Amanda Eid and Josh Zurawski, both now 35, met in 1991 at Aldersgate Academy Kindergarten in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and dated in high school.   

  “Josh has always told me he’s been in love with me since we were 4 years old,” Amanda said.   

  Three years ago, they married in Austin, Texas, where they both work in high-tech jobs.   

  They tried to start a family but failed.  Amanda underwent fertility treatments for a year and a half and finally got pregnant.   

  “So excited to share that Baby Zurawski is due at the end of January,” Amanda shared on Instagram in July.  The post included a photo of her and her husband in ‘Mama’ and ‘Dad’ hats, while Amanda held up a strip of ultrasound photos of their baby girl.   

  “The fact that we were pregnant was a miracle and we were beside ourselves with happiness,” she said.   

  But then, 18 weeks – just four months – into her pregnancy, Amanda’s water broke.   

  The amniotic fluid her baby depended on was leaking.  She says the doctor told her the baby wouldn’t survive.   

  “We found out we were going to lose our baby,” Amanda said.  “My cervix was fully dilated 22 weeks premature and I was inevitably going to miscarry.”   

  She and Josh begged the doctor to see if there was a way to save the baby.   

  “I just kept asking, ‘isn’t there anything we can do?’  And the answer was no, Amanda said.   

  When a woman’s water breaks, she is at high risk for a life-threatening infection.  While Amanda and Josh’s baby – they named her Willow – was certain to die, she still had a heartbeat, so doctors said that under Texas law, they could not terminate the pregnancy.   

  “My doctor said, ‘Well, right now we just have to wait, because we can’t induce labor, even though you’re 100 percent going to lose your baby,'” Amanda said.  “[The doctors] they couldn’t do their own business because of the way the laws are written in Texas.”   

  Texas law allows abortion if the mother “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or resulting from a pregnancy that places the woman at risk of death or places the woman at serious risk of significant impairment of an important bodily function.”   

  But Texas lawmakers haven’t spelled out exactly what that means, and a doctor found violating the law could face losing his medical license and possible life in prison.   

  “They are extremely vague,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and Law Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center.  “They do not specify precisely the circumstances in which an abortion can be performed.”   

  In September, CNN contacted 28 Texas lawmakers who supported anti-abortion legislation, asking them to respond to CNN’s stories about the woman in Houston and the woman in central Texas.   

  Only one lawmaker responded.   

  “Like any other law, there are unintended consequences.  We don’t want to see any unintended consequences.  if we do, it is our responsibility as lawmakers to correct these flaws,” wrote state Sen. Eddie Lucio, who will retire from the Senate at the end of the year.   

  The Zurafskys were in an ad for Beto O’Rourke’s failed gubernatorial campaign in Texas.   

  After her water broke, Amanda’s doctors sent her home and told her to watch for signs of infection and that only when she was “considered sick enough to be life-threatening” would they terminate the pregnancy, Amanda said.   

  “The doctor told me it could take hours, days, weeks,” she recalls.   

   Once they heard “hours,” they decided there was no time to travel to another state for an abortion.   

  “The nearest ‘haven’ state is at least an eight-hour drive,” Amanda wrote in an online essay in The Meteor.  “Developing rot – which can kill quickly – in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence.”   

  So they were waiting for it in Texas.   

  On August 26, three days after her water broke, Amanda was found shivering in the Texas heat.   

  “We had a heat wave, I think it was 105 degrees that day, and I was freezing, and I was shaking, my teeth were chattering.  I was trying to tell Josh I wasn’t feeling well and my teeth were grinding so hard I couldn’t even get the sentence out,’ she said.   

  Josh was shocked by his wife’s condition.   

  “To see in a matter of maybe five minutes, go from a normal temperature to the state he was in was really, really scary,” he said.  “Too fast, it went down too, too fast.  She was in a state I’ve never seen before.”   

  Josh rushed his wife to the hospital.  Her temperature was 102 degrees.  She was too weak to walk on her own.   

  Her temperature rose to 103 degrees.  Finally, Amanda was sick enough that doctors felt it was legally safe to terminate the pregnancy, she said.   

  But Amanda was so sick that antibiotics wouldn’t stop the bacterial infection raging in her body.  Not even a blood transfusion cured her.   

  About 12 hours after her pregnancy was terminated, doctors and nurses flooded her room.   

  “There’s a lot of commotion and I said, ‘what’s going on?’  and they said, “we’re taking you to the ICU” and I said “why?”  and they said, ‘you’re showing symptoms of rot,'” he said.   

  Sepsis, the body’s extreme reaction to an infection, is a life-threatening medical emergency.   

  Amanda’s blood pressure plummeted.  Her platelets dropped.  He doesn’t remember much from that time.   

  But Josh does.   

  “It was really scary to see Amanda crash,” he said.  “I was really afraid I was going to lose her.”   

  Family members flew in from across the country because they feared it would be the last time they would see Amanda.   

  Doctors inserted an IV line near her heart to give her antibiotics and drugs to stabilize her blood pressure.  Eventually, Amanda turned the corner and survived.   

  But her medical ordeal is not over.   

  Amanda’s uterus was scarred by the infection and may not be able to bear more children.  He recently had surgery to fix the scars, but it’s unclear if it will be successful.   

  That leaves the Zurafskys scared — and furious that they may never have a family because of a Texas law.   

  “[This] it shouldn’t have happened,” Amanda said.  “That’s what’s so infuriating about all of this, is that we didn’t have to — we didn’t have to — go through all that trauma.”   

  The Zurafskys say the politicians who voted for the anti-abortion law call themselves “pro-life” — but they don’t see it that way.   

  “Amanda almost died.  This is not pro-life.  Amanda will have challenges in the future having more children.  This is not pro-life,” Josh said.   

  “Nothing for [this] feels pro-life,” his wife added.   

  In many ways, Amanda feels lucky.  She wonders if she would be alive today if it weren’t for her husband, who rushed her to the hospital and made sure she received the best possible care.  And they have good jobs with good health insurance and live in a big city with high quality health care.   

  “I had all that going for me, and yet, this was the result,” he said.   

  She and Josh are concerned about women in rural areas, poor women or young, single mothers in states like Texas.  What would happen to them, considering what happened to Amanda?   

  “These barbaric laws prevented her from getting any amount of health care when she needed it until she was in a life-threatening moment,” Josh said.