2026-09-15T18:57:40-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
蒂埃拉·沃克在怀孕20周时因子痫前期去世，年仅37岁。其家人已在德克萨斯州提起诉讼，称她本可通过堕胎挽救生命，但随着健康状况迅速恶化，她被拒绝了堕胎手术。
沃克家人的律师于周二在贝萨尔县地区法院提起诉讼，指控德克萨斯州总检察长肯·帕克斯顿、圣安东尼奥德克萨斯大学健康科学中心、她的几名医生及其他相关方“蓄意漠视、歧视和医疗虐待，最终导致她在2024年遭遇可怕且悲惨的死亡”。子痫前期是一种严重的妊娠高血压疾病，可能致命。
沃克的家人指控，现任参议员竞选人的共和党人帕克斯顿，以及另一名被告、德克萨斯州医疗委员会执行主任斯蒂芬特·布林特·卡尔顿，通过实施“无情的全面禁令”剥夺了她的生命权，而据称医生未能提供挽救生命的医疗救治。
帕克斯顿一直公开为德克萨斯州近乎全面的堕胎禁令辩护。他曾起诉从州外向德克萨斯州运送堕胎药物的医生和组织。他的办公室未回应哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的置评请求。
“德克萨斯州的政治和医疗体系不仅处处失职，还主动伤害了沃克女士，”诉讼中写道。
“蒂埃拉·沃克之死，是因为她的……医疗服务提供者没有提供那唯一能挽救她生命的医疗手段，”代表该家庭的律师米歇尔·马洛伊告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。她表示，他们拒绝手术是因为德克萨斯州围绕堕胎存在“巨大的恐惧文化”。
普罗Publica率先报道了沃克死亡的相关情况。
蒂埃拉·沃克。家庭照片
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻已联系诉讼中的所有相关方。大学健康系统在一份声明中表示，无法就个别患者或诉讼置评，但称“我们的首要任务是提供医学上恰当且及时的护理，同时保护患者隐私并遵守所有适用法律法规”。
沃克于2024年9月19日在急诊室就诊时得知自己已怀孕近8周。
她多年来一直与慢性健康问题作斗争，包括肥胖、高血压、哮喘和2型糖尿病，此前一直在努力恢复健康。诉讼称，三年前她怀双胞胎时患上子痫前期，导致双胞胎死产，“使她的健康状况急剧下滑”。
到2024年中期，她的健康状况有所改善——血压降低，并且在GLP-1药物的帮助下体重有所减轻。
一名急诊医生在沃克的病历中写道，“怀孕太早，不会出现子痫”，在调整了针对妊娠的降压药物后，她被送回家中。
几小时后她再次返回医院，当时她仍有抽搐、恶心、呕吐，并抱怨疼痛。她的病历记录显示，她的抽搐可能由多种因素引发，包括妊娠相关恶心、焦虑和压力。
她在10月的大部分时间都住院治疗，病历显示她接受了针对抽搐的全面检查，医生指出这些是非癫痫性的“功能性抽搐”，与她的妊娠或子痫前期无关。
她的病历显示，住院期间几乎全程都有家人陪伴，并且多次为她提供针对焦虑的心理健康和精神科治疗。
“他们真的对她很糟糕，因为他们觉得她是在装疯卖傻，”她的姑姑拉坦亚·沃克告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。“有一天他们让我告诉她丈夫：‘你去跟他说，这全都是她脑子里想出来的。’”
根据诉讼，在10月漫长的住院期间，沃克和她的家人告诉医护人员“妊娠会夺走沃克女士的生命，并询问她是否可以终止妊娠”。
据马洛伊介绍，蒂埃拉·沃克先是在10月12日在另一家医院提出堕胎请求，随后在10月30日于大学健康系统医院再次提出，当时她怀孕约11周。
“尽管继续妊娠明显危及她的生命，但大学健康系统的工作人员没有任何一人向沃克女士介绍堕胎作为挽救生命的医疗手段的可能性，没有为她提供该治疗，也没有建议她离开州内。相反，医院工作人员一直坚称‘宝宝没问题’，并以此为由继续拒绝她所需的护理，”诉讼中写道。
10月下旬至11月初，两名医生在沃克的病历中记录她处于“高”死亡风险中。
尽管如此，她还是出院了，几天后再次入院。
“我一次又一次地请求他们为她做堕胎手术。他们却告诉我……‘问题出在她身上，但不是宝宝的问题，’”拉坦亚·沃克说道。
诉讼称，医院工作人员以“你的宝宝没问题”回应她的堕胎请求，同时“无视沃克女士不断恶化的健康状况”。
在给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的一份声明中，德克萨斯州医疗委员会表示，根据其现行规定，“当处理存在或可能出现紧急情况的病症时，医生无需等到母亲生命直接受到威胁或其主要身体功能立即面临风险，才提供必要的医疗护理”，并指出在某些情况下，此类护理“可能包括终止妊娠”。
拉坦亚·沃克表示，她的侄女原本想要这个孩子，但也在考虑当时14岁的儿子J.J.。
“她必须留下来陪J.J.，”拉坦亚·沃克回忆起在医院与侄女的对话时说道。
蒂埃拉·沃克与丈夫埃里克。家庭照片
拉坦亚·沃克表示，她记得侄女在请求医生终止妊娠时用到了“堕胎”一词。但哥伦比亚广播公司新闻审核的6500页病历中，医生并未记录沃克任何一次提出堕胎请求的情况，也没有医生向她提供过堕胎服务。
“他们会藏起任何需要藏起来的东西，”拉坦亚·沃克声称。
另一名代表沃克家庭的律师莫莉·杜安告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，德克萨斯州的医疗提供者“甚至害怕在病历中写下这个词”。
“我们审阅了数十个案例，”杜安说。“显而易见的是，医生们害怕到甚至不敢在病历里写下这个词，所以病历里根本不会出现这个词。”
马洛伊表示，在其他案件的医生证词中，他们曾描述过与客户讨论堕胎的情况，但由于“来自州方的后果”，他们并未记录这些对话。
拉坦亚·沃克表示，她和侄女没有讨论过前往其他州接受手术的事，但考虑过在线订购堕胎药物。她的侄女对此想法持开放态度，但拉坦亚·沃克说，她因为担心会出现并发症，在为侄女订购药物这件事上打了退堂鼓。
“那样的话，责任就全在我身上了，”她说。
德克萨斯州近乎全面禁止堕胎的州法于2022年生效，紧随最高法院推翻“罗伊诉韦德案”之后。该法律规定，若妊娠威胁母亲生命，则可例外。任何被认定实施堕胎的人将面临最高99年的监禁、罚款以及吊销行医执照的处罚。
2025年，德克萨斯州出台立法，试图澄清近乎全面堕胎禁令下的医疗豁免条款——此前普罗Publica的一项调查发现，该州多名孕妇因治疗延误死亡。此次修订包括明确合法的医疗紧急情况豁免条款，并为提供堕胎作为挽救生命手段的医疗专业人员加强法律保护。
贝萨尔县地区检察官乔·冈萨雷斯的一名发言人，作为诉讼中的被告之一，告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，冈萨雷斯从未起诉过任何堕胎案件，他的办公室“将仔细审查执法机构提交的所有案件，并做出明智的起诉决定，因为我们致力于确保我们的评估基于公平和正义”。
沃克最后一次前往急诊室是在12月27日，病历显示她被诊断为子痫前期。尽管存在潜在致命并发症，但她的律师表示，医生从未向她提供堕胎服务，并且当晚晚些时候她就出院了。
诉讼指出，她12月27日的出院文件中写明，分娩——即该阶段的堕胎手术——可能是治疗子痫前期的最佳手段。
“医疗指南表明，她本应入院接受治疗、稳定病情并服用药物预防抽搐，”哥伦比亚广播公司新闻医疗通讯员、KFF健康新闻公共卫生特约主编塞琳·贡德博士解释道。根据这些指南，贡德说，“由于胎儿可能过于幼小无法存活，她的妊娠本应被终止。但相反，她被送回了家。”
几天后，沃克十几岁的儿子发现她在床上失去了意识。那天是他15岁的生日。
尸检发现沃克死于高血压性心血管疾病和子痫前期。她还患有心脏肥大、严重肺水肿和肾脏损伤。法医发现胎儿发育符合20周妊娠的正常水平，体重不足一磅。
“几个月来，沃克女士一直要求终止妊娠——尽管这是一场计划内的妊娠——因为她认为自己无法顺利度过孕期。可悲的是，她的判断是对的。在她怀孕期间的任何时间进行堕胎都能挽救她的生命，”诉讼中写道。
马洛伊和杜安否认该诉讼的时机具有政治目的。帕克斯顿正在德克萨斯州竞争激烈的参议院选举中参选，共和党人希望保住参议院多数席位。沃克家庭的律师表示，两年的诉讼时效即将在未来几天到期。
“他在办公室里的所作所为是利用并滥用总检察长的职位，煽动恐惧文化，”杜安说。“我们的民权法律规定，当个别官员的行为导致其公民死亡时，个人可以追究其个人责任，而本案正是如此。”
被问及想对帕克斯顿说什么时，拉坦亚·沃克给出了尖锐的回应。
“说实话，”她说，“下地狱去吧。”
Family blames Texas’ “merciless” abortion ban for woman’s death, files lawsuit targeting Paxton, doctors
2026-09-15T18:57:40-0400 / CBS News
The family of Tierra Walker, who died of preeclampsia at the age of 37 when she was 20 weeks pregnant, has filed a lawsuit in Texas, saying she was denied an abortion that could have saved her life as her health quickly deteriorated.
Lawyers for Walker’s family filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Bexar County District Court accusing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, several of her doctors and others of “deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment [that] ultimately caused her horrific and tragic death” in 2024. Preeclampsia is a severe high blood pressure condition in pregnancy that can be fatal.
Walker’s family alleges Paxton — a Republican who is currently running for Senate — and another defendant, Stephent Brint Carlton, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, stripped her of her right to life by imposing “a merciless blanket prohibition” on abortion, while the doctors allegedly failed to offer life-saving medical treatment.
Paxton has been outspoken in his defense of Texas’ near-total abortion ban. He has filed lawsuits against doctors and organizations who ship abortion pills to Texas from out of state. His office did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
“At every turn, Texas’s political and medical establishments not only failed but actively harmed Ms. Walker,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Tierra Walker is dead because not one of her … healthcare providers would give her the one medical procedure that would have saved her life,” Michelle Maloney, an attorney representing the family, told CBS News. They refused, she said, because of “the immense culture of fear” around abortion in the state of Texas.
ProPublica was first to report on the circumstances of Walker’s death.
Tierra Walker. Family photo
CBS News has reached out to all the parties involved in the lawsuit. University Health said in a statement that it could not comment on individual patients or litigation, but said, “Our priority is to provide medically appropriate and timely care, while safeguarding patient privacy and complying with all applicable laws and regulations.”
Walker learned she was nearly eight weeks pregnant on Sept. 19, 2024, during an emergency room visit.
She had been working to get her health back on track after struggling with chronic health problems for years, including obesity, high blood pressure, asthma and Type 2 diabetes. Three years earlier, she had developed preeclampsia while pregnant with twins, which led to the stillbirth of her twins and “sent her into a health spiral,” the lawsuit says.
By mid-2024, her health was improving — her blood pressure was lower and she was losing weight with the help of a GLP-1 drug.
An emergency room doctor noted in Walker’s medical records it was “too early in pregnancy to have eclampsia” and she was sent home after her blood pressure medications were adjusted to account for her pregnancy.
She returned to the hospital hours later as she continued to have seizures, nausea, vomiting and complained of pain. Her medical records noted that her seizures may have been triggered by several factors, including pregnancy-related nausea, anxiety and stress.
She was hospitalized for most of October, where medical records show she received extensive testing for her seizures, which doctors noted were non-epileptic “functional seizures,” unrelated to her pregnancy or preeclampsia.
Her records show she was surrounded by family members for nearly the entirety of her hospital stay, and that she was repeatedly offered mental health and psychiatric treatments for anxiety.
“They really treated her so bad because they thought she was crazy,” her aunt LaTanya Walker told CBS News. “One day they told me to tell her husband, ‘Can you go tell him that this is all in her head?’”
During the lengthy hospital stay in October, according to the lawsuit, Walker and her family told medical staff “that the pregnancy was going to cost Ms. Walker her life, and asked if she could terminate the pregnancy.”
According to Maloney, Tierra Walker first asked for an abortion at another hospital on Oct. 12, and then asked at University Health on Oct. 30, when she would have been about 11 weeks pregnant.
“Despite the clear risk to her life in continuing the pregnancy, none of University Health’s staff counseled Ms. Walker on the possibility of abortion as a life-saving medical treatment, offered her this treatment, or suggested that she leave the state. Instead, hospital staff kept insisting ‘nothing is wrong with the baby’ and continued to refuse the care that she needed on that basis,” the lawsuit alleges.
In late October and early November, two doctors documented in Walker’s medical records that she was at “high” risk of death.
Still, she was discharged from the hospital, only to be readmitted days later.
“I asked them time and time again to give her an abortion. And they would tell me … ‘It’s her, but it’s not the baby,’” LaTanya Walker said.
The lawsuit claims hospital staff responded to her requests for an abortion by saying, “Your baby is fine,” while allegedly “disregarding Ms. Walker’s deteriorating health.”
In a statement to CBS News, the Texas Medical Board said that under its current rules, “when addressing a condition that is or may become emergent, a physician is not required to wait until a mother’s life is in immediate danger or her major bodily function is at immediate risk before providing necessary medical care” and noted that in some circumstances, that care “may include the termination of a pregnancy.”
LaTanya Walker said her niece wanted to have the baby but was also thinking about her then 14-year-old son, JJ.
“She had to be here for JJ,” LaTanya Walker said, recalling a conversation she had with her niece in the hospital.
Tierra Walker with her husband, Eric. Family photo
LaTanya Walker said she recalls her niece using the word “abortion” when asking doctors to terminate her pregnancy. But in the 6,500 pages of medical records reviewed by CBS News, doctors did not document any instance of Walker asking for an abortion, nor did doctors offer her one.
“They’re going to hide whatever they need to hide,” LaTanya Walker claimed.
Molly Duane, another attorney representing the Walker family, told CBS News that medical providers in Texas are “scared to even write the word in the medical chart.”
“We have reviewed dozens of cases,” Duane said. “And what is clear is that doctors are so scared to even write the word in their medical chart that it does not appear there.”
Maloney said that in depositions with doctors involved in other cases, they have described conversations they’ve had with her clients about abortion that they do not document “because of repercussions from the state.”
LaTanya Walker said she and her niece did not discuss traveling to another state for the procedure, but considered ordering abortion medication online. Her niece was open to the idea, but LaTanya Walker said she got cold feet about ordering it for her niece in case there were complications.
“Then that would have been something on me,” she said.
Texas’ state law banning nearly all abortions went into effect in 2022, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The law had an exception if a pregnancy threatened the life of the mother. Anyone found guilty of providing an abortion faced up to 99 years in prison, fines and the loss of their medical license.
In 2025, Texas enacted legislation that sought to clarify the medical exemptions to the near-total ban after a ProPublica investigation found that several pregnant women in the state died after delays in their care. The changes included clarifying legal medical emergency exceptions, and enhanced legal protections for medical professionals who provide abortions as life-saving care.
A spokesperson for Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, told CBS News that Gonzales has not prosecuted any abortion cases, and his office “will carefully review all cases filed by law enforcement agencies and make informed charging decisions, as we are committed to ensuring that our assessments are grounded in fairness and justice.”
Walker returned to the emergency room for the final time on Dec. 27, when medical records show that she was diagnosed with preeclampsia. Despite potentially fatal complications, her attorneys say she was never offered an abortion, and she was discharged by doctors later that night.
The lawsuit pointed out that her discharge paperwork from Dec. 27 states that delivery, meaning an abortion at that stage, may be the best treatment for preeclampsia.
“Medical guidelines say she should’ve been admitted, stabilized and given medicine to prevent seizures,” explained Dr. Celine Gounder, CBS News medical correspondent and the editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. Under those guidelines, Gounder said, “her pregnancy should have been terminated since her baby was likely too young to survive. Instead, she was sent home.”
Days later, Walker’s teenage son found her unresponsive in her bed. It was his 15th birthday.
An autopsy found Walker died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease and preeclampsia. She also had an enlarged heart, as well as severe buildup of fluid in her lungs and kidney damage. The medical examiner found the fetus had normal development for 20 weeks’ gestation, weighing less than a pound.
“For months, Ms. Walker had been asking for termination of her pregnancy — even though this was a wanted pregnancy — because she did not think she would survive the pregnancy. Tragically, she was right. An abortion at any point during her pregnancy would have saved her life,” the lawsuit alleges.
Maloney and Duane denied that the timing of the lawsuit was political. Paxton is running in Texas’ highly competitive Senate race as Republicans hope to retain control of the majority. The Walker family attorneys said the two-year statute of limitations is set to expire in the coming days.
“What he’s doing in his office is using and abusing his role as attorney general to stoke a culture of fear,” Duane said. “Our civil rights laws say that individual officials can be held liable in their personal capacity when their activity leads to the death of one of their citizens, and that’s what happened here.”
Asked about her message to Paxton, LaTanya Walker gave a pointed response.
“Honestly,” she said, “go to hell.”
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