Episode Details

The family of a Texas woman who died begging for an abortion is suing Ken Paxton. It’s the first lawsuit in this country over a death caused by an abortion ban, and it names the attorney general who is currently running for Senate.

Her name was Tierra Walker. Thirty-seven years old, a dental assistant in San Antonio, a wife, and a mom to a kid named JJ. In 2021 she developed preeclampsia and lost twins. So when she found out she was pregnant again in September of 2024, with uncontrolled blood pressure, diabetes, and seizures nobody could explain, she knew exactly what was coming for her.

On October 14th, 2024, she asked a doctor at Methodist Hospital Northeast, “Wouldn’t you think it would be better for me to not have the baby?”

She was told there was no emergency. Nothing was wrong with the pregnancy. Only with her. She would hear a version of that for the next eleven weeks.

More than 90 doctors were involved in Tierra Walker’s care. Twenty-one of them were OB-GYNs. One of them wrote in her chart that she was at “high risk of clinical deterioration and/or death.” Not one of them offered her an abortion. That reporting is Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser at ProPublica, who told her story last November, months before a lawyer filed anything.

Her attorney Molly Duane says doctors in Texas are now scared to write the word abortion in a patient’s chart at all. That’s not squeamishness. Texas makes it a crime to aid and abet an abortion, and performing one carries up to 99 years. Ken Paxton has spent years suing doctors in other states to make sure everybody got the message. He built that fear on purpose and then acted shocked when it worked.

On December 27th, Tierra went to the ER with a blood pressure of 174 over 115. They diagnosed preeclampsia. They lowered her blood pressure and they sent her home.

Her discharge paperwork from that night says delivery may be the best treatment for preeclampsia. At 20 weeks, delivery is an abortion. They wrote the cure on the discharge papers and walked her out the door.

Three days later, on his 15th birthday, JJ opened his mom’s bedroom door and found her face down on the bed. He called 911, and the dispatcher talked him through sliding her onto the rug and starting compressions. “I need you,” he shouted. “I need you.”

The Texas Medical Board’s contribution to all this was a statement explaining that doctors are “not required to wait until a mother’s life is in immediate danger” before they act. Good to know. More than ninety of them waited anyway, and she’s dead.

And Dr. Christina Francis, who runs the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said Tierra’s death was “certainly not the fault of Texas’ abortion law,” and then said she should have been stabilized “and then delivered.” Delivered. At 20 weeks. You just prescribed the abortion. You described the exact procedure your own movement turned into a 99-year felony while insisting the law had nothing to do with anything.

Ken Paxton is 47 days from a Senate seat. He’s running against James Talarico, and right now he’s losing. If you live in Texas, that’s not a poll, that’s an assignment. Go vote.

Tierra’s aunt LaTanya was asked what she would say to him.

“Honestly,” she said. “Go to hell.”

Sources:

https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-tierra-walker-preeclampsia

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-abortion-death-lawsuit-tierra-walker-ken-paxton/

https://19thnews.org/2026/09/texas-abortion-lawsuit-ken-paxton-tierra-walker/