Yeniifer Alvarez from Luling, a rural town in central Texas, struggled with accessing adequate medical care during a high-risk pregnancy, challenged by local maternal care deserts and state laws. Her health complications, including hypertension, diabetes, pulmory edema, and extreme obesity, intensified due to limited local medical facilities and her inability to consistently take medication stemming from being uninsured. Like many women in the area, Yeni resorted to the local E.R. with no labor-and-delivery unit for urgent pregnancy care even though the hospital was overwhelmed and ill-equipped to treat such cases. Despite Yeni’s preexisting health conditions making her pregnancy high risk, doctors never discussed with Yeni the possibility of terminating her pregnancy to protect her life due to current Texas law. Although Yeni made numerous trips to an OB-GYN in the greater Austin area to monitor her condition, the far away travel and high medical costs proved too burdensome, leading to her no longer attending appointments. Yeni required multiple emergency ambulence transports to bigger hospitals throughout her pregnancy, sometimes even requiring the hospital to call a helicopter to expedite care. Tragically, these challenges culminated in the loss of both Yeni and her baby Selene in July 2022, underscoring the severe impacts of healthcare accessibility and policy on individual outcomes. Yeni was only 27.
Instead of the scheduled baby shower, Yeni’s family had a funeral. Her mother, Leticia, is still seeking answers to determine whether this catastrophe could have been prevented.