The following is an excerpt from The Kristan Hawkins Show. Subscribe to The Kristan Hawkins Show HERE and opt-in to Kristan’s daily text update by texting “KRISTAN” to 53445 so you never miss breaking pro-life news!

Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old pregnant mom, tragically died of medical neglect in Texas. To add insult to injury, she’s the latest mom whose death is being exploited by abortion activists to defend abortion, including those who also pose as “journalists.” 

ProPublica was so desperate to use this story to promote abortion that they lied in their reporting, all in an effort to expand abortion access.

What happened to Tierra Walker? 

Tierra Walker was the mom to a 14-year-old son who was 20 weeks pregnant when she died of preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy complication that requires close monitoring and can call for rapid lifesaving interventions. Tierra had a host of other health problems before pregnancy, and on top of that, she was 37 years old during this pregnancy, which is considered “advanced maternal age.” The risks of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia go up with age – and Tierra did have these conditions. In fact, Tierra had tragically lost twin babies to stillbirth due to preeclampsia in an earlier pregnancy.

ProPublica reported: As Walker’s first trimester continued, she kept seizing. Her body convulsed, her eyes rolled back and she was often unable to speak for up to 30 minutes at a time. Some days, the episodes came in rapid waves, with little relief… doctors were not able to determine what was causing the spasms. Walker couldn’t get out of bed, in case a seizure made her fall, and this left her vulnerable to blood clots. She soon developed one in her leg that posed a new lethal threat: It could travel to her lungs and kill her instantly.

This pregnancy was not safe for Tierra or the child she was carrying. According to ProPublica: “During Walker’s many hospital and prenatal visits, 21 OB-GYNs were among the more than 90 physicians involved in her care.” ProPublica laments that none of these doctors counseled or offered to kill Tierra’s baby. “None of them counseled her on the option — or the health benefits — of a termination, according to medical records,” they say. But Texas does have an exception in its pro-life laws for life of the mother, meaning that Tierra’s doctors could have legally carried out an abortion if they felt this were needed to save her life. 

The problem was not that Tierra was not offered an abortion when she was in the hospital. The problem is that she was not in the hospital when the foreseeable medical emergency that claimed her life occurred. 

Instead, she was at home in bed, where her 14-year-old son found her lifeless body on his birthday. Why? Why was Tierra Walker at home in bed when she had severe preeclampsia, diabetes, blood clots, and seizures? The answer is because she had been sent home from the hospital in the middle of an extremely high-risk pregnancy situation that clearly required full-time hospital observation. 

This isn’t a case of a pro-life law interfering in the proper care of a high-risk mom; this is a case of medical neglect. 

Here’s ProPublica’s account of what happened to Tierra in the last week of her life: “In her second trimester, Walker’s seizures continued and her hypertension remained out of control. At an appointment on Dec. 27, at around 20 weeks, a doctor noted spiking blood pressure and sent her to University Hospital’s ER. There, doctors recorded a diagnosis of preeclampsia… The experts who reviewed Walker’s vital signs for ProPublica said her blood pressure of 174 over 115 was so concerning at that point, she needed to be admitted and monitored. Most questioned her doctor’s choice not to label her condition as severe. The treatment for severe preeclampsia… is delivery — or, at 20 weeks, an abortion.”

Instead, doctors lowered her blood pressure with medication and sent her home. 

Tierra should have been in the hospital when her preeclampsia became severe and claimed her life and the life of her 20-week-old baby. She should have been on monitors that would have alerted hospital staff that something was wrong. Hospital staff who could have immediately intervened, and potentially saved her life. It may have even been best to offer to deliver her baby, which is not an abortion, despite ProPublica’s blatant lie above.  

There absolutely are pregnancy situations where the mother will die if she continues to be pregnant. We as pro-lifers don’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend this isn’t true. If this was the case for Tierra Walker, the medical standard would have been to deliver her child.

Dr. Donna Harrison of AAPLOG, the American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs, explains: 

“There is a very big difference between previable separations and elective abortion. In these situations where a mother and her fetus must be separated in order to save the life of the mother we would try to optimize the conditions of the separation so that the fetus has the best possibility to live.  But there are cases when the baby will not survive the separation due to gestational age. We call these previable separations. These separations are done with the intent to save both if possible, but at least to save the life of one.”

“Previable separations are not the same as elective abortions.  The intent of an abortion was made very clear at the Supreme Court hearings over the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. The abortionists argued that the product the abortionist is paid to produce is a dead baby, and that is what distinguishes a delivery from an abortion. The intent of a delivery is to produce, if possible, both a live baby and live mom. The intent of an abortion is to produce a dead baby.”

In Tierra’s case, the survival of her baby after delivery would have been virtually impossible since she was only 20 weeks into her pregnancy, too early for critical organ systems to be functional enough for life outside the womb. Nevertheless, there would have been no pro-life objection and no legal barrier in Texas to Tierra’s child being delivered to save Tierra’s life. 

But ProPublica lies, suggesting that Tierra died because she was not offered an abortion and that Texas law has no exceptions to pro-life laws that allow for lifesaving interventions like preterm delivery. Neither one of these things is true. 

Thousands of OB/GYNs all over the country agree that abortion isn’t even necessary in these cases, pro-life laws still make an exception to defer to the judgment of the attending physician and leave no ambiguity about the necessity of saving her life. 

Kristan Hawkins is the President of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action. Subscribe to The Kristan Hawkins Show HERE.