A pregnant Texas teenager died after three separate visits to an emergency room in attempts to get care in another incident that has highlighted the medical impact of the loss of abortion rights in the US.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours in October 2023, each time feeling worse than before. Crain was not diagnosed with strep throat until her first visit. The hospital did not investigate her sharp abdominal cramps, ProPublica reports.

Crain is one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban, which was imposed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion. Josseli Barnica, 28, died after a miscarriage in 2021.

These incidents are seen as evidence of a new reality in which American health care professionals in states with new strict abortion restrictions are hesitant or even afraid to provide care to pregnant mothers for fear of legal consequences. Texas’ abortion ban threatens jail time for interventions that stop the fetus’s heartbeat, regardless of whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.

Medical records show that Crain tested positive for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition, on her second visit. But doctors cleared her to leave anyway after apparently confirming that her six-month-old fetus still had a heartbeat.

During her third visit to the hospital, Crain was eventually transferred to the intensive care unit after an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm the death of the fetus,” ProPublica reported.

She died hours later after organ failure. A nurse noticed that her lips had turned “blue and dusky,” ProPublica said. The teenager would have turned twenty on Friday.

Although Texas has exceptions for life-threatening conditions, doctors’ fear and uncertainty about which treatments are or are not considered a crime has had devastating consequences for women in need of health care.

The result is that in states with abortion bans, patients are often swapped between hospitals to avoid responsibility and argue about legality, an act that wastes valuable and potentially life-saving time.

“Pregnant women have essentially become untouchables,” Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University, told ProPublica.

Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said Crain’s death underscored the deadly threat of abortion bans.

“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence,” Timmaraju said in a statement.

Timmaraju placed the blame for the abortion ban on the shoulders of Republican politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent senator from Texas who faces a tough re-election battle against Democrat Collin Allred.

“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is by voting for reproductive freedom,” including by supporting Allred and Kamala Harris in their fight against Trump in the Nov. 5 election.

By doing this “we can restore the right to abortion and these bans,” Timmaraju said.