As soon as Perez’s OB/GYN, Jeffery Morgan, reviewed Norris-De La Cruz’s ultrasound scans, he immediately identified an ectopic pregnancy.
All the textbook signs were there, he said in an interview a week after the consultation: A large mass on the right side of her pelvis. Elevated levels of pregnancy hormone with no visible pregnancy inside the uterus. Fluid in the abdomen.
“There are times when it’s really early in the process when it can be hard to know if it’s ectopic — but that honestly would have been weeks before where she was in the pregnancy,” Morgan said, adding that he was 98 percent sure Norris-De La Cruz had an ectopic when he initially examined her.
At his clinic, Morgan told Norris-De La Cruz and her mother that he recommended surgery as soon as possible.
As soon as they heard that, they both started to sob.
“Wow,” Norris-De La Cruz recalled thinking as she looked up at the doctor. “I don’t have to make my case. You see it. You understand that this is an emergency.”
Norris-De La Cruz was scheduled for surgery at Medical City hospital in Arlington three hours later.
Morgan was able to remove the ectopic pregnancy, according to records.
But the mass had grown so large he also had to take most of her right fallopian tube, a loss that could affect her future fertility.
That outcome was likely inevitable, according to most of the OB/GYNs consulted for this story. Norris-De La Cruz probably would have lost her tube even if she had been treated immediately at Arlington Memorial, they said.
Morgan said he never considered delaying or withholding treatment because of the abortion ban, which he says clearly allows Texas doctors to treat ectopic pregnancies. He said he was shocked to learn that Norris-De La Cruz had been turned away.
“Honestly, it baffles me,” Morgan said. “Any kind of ectopic, anything like that is excluded.”
In the days since the surgery, Norris-De La Cruz and Lloyd have thought a lot about Texas’s abortion law, which they both believe factored into the delay in Norris-De La Cruz’s care.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, the two had argued fiercely about what a near-total abortion ban would mean for women in the state — with Norris-De La Cruz fearing a loss of personal freedoms, and Lloyd welcoming new protections for babies who couldn’t speak up for themselves.
Initially, Lloyd said, she thought the Texas abortion law would only affect people who decided they didn’t want to be pregnant — never imagining it could prevent women from accessing lifesaving care. Now, she said, she has completely changed her mind about abortion bans.
“I didn’t realize how far it had gone,” she said. “But it has happened to my life now, with my daughter.”
“Her life has been in danger and affected by someone who was too afraid to help.”
Last modified: June 24, 2024
