A Texas family is suing Attorney General Ken Paxton, the executive director of the Texas Medical Board and a number of medical professionals for the death of their family member, whose death they claim could have been prevented.
Tierra Walker died at age 37 when she was 20 weeks pregnant.
“Those responsible must be held accountable,” the lawsuit says. “Their deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment ultimately caused her horrific and tragic death.”
“Ultimately, none of the state actors named as defendants in this lawsuit are wholly immune from being sued. Both the Texas Constitution and the Federal Constitution prohibit state actors from killing their citizens. If that means that Texas’s abortion bans or the Texas Tort Claims Act — or both — are unconstitutional, so be it,” the lawsuit continues.
Case background
The lawsuit argues that Walker, a mother and wife, could still be alive today if she were granted an abortion. Texas has some of the strictest laws on abortion in the country, ultimately prohibiting the procedure unless the patient’s “life or health” is at risk, according to Texas law.
During her pregnancy, Walker reportedly experienced seizures and blood clots so severe they had to be surgically removed, all symptoms of preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that can result in death. She was diagnosed with it 20 weeks into her pregnancy, according to ProPublica. In a profile on Walker’s story, ProPublica reported that Walker had been diagnosed with “a dangerous case of preeclampsia that had led to the stillbirth of her twins” years earlier.
Walker’s aunt, Latanya Walker, told CBS News that she urged medical professionals to perform an abortion, but they said the issue was not the baby, but Walker’s own body.
In December, on her son’s 15th birthday, he found her unresponsive in her room. An autopsy report determined that her death was in part due to preeclampsia, per CBS News. None of the medical records — which the outlet said they reviewed — mentioned abortion. Attorneys for the Walker family told CBS News that this is normal and is done purposefully.
“Tierra Walker is dead because not one of her healthcare providers would give her the one medical procedure that would have saved her life, and they would not do that because of the immense cultural fear that has been created in the state of Texas,” attorney Michelle Maloney said.
She added that she believes the procedure wasn’t administered to Walker out of fear of retribution. In Texas, doctors could lose their medical license, face fines or even years in prison for violating state abortion law.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the lawsuit claims that defendants “imposed a merciless blanket prohibition on abortion that intimidates doctors into inaction and breeds extreme fear among Texas’s medical establishment. As a result, too many pregnant Texans have already died preventable deaths. Yet no one has held them accountable.”
In 2024, Texas reported just 78 legal abortions, whereas 7,088 Texans had abortions in states with more lenient laws, per the Charlotte Lozier Institute.