Life of the Mother

Texas Medical Board Sanctions Three Doctors for Delayed Care That Led to the Deaths of Two Pregnant Women

Porsha Ngumezi and Nevaeh Crain died during miscarriages in Texas. The state’s medical board ruled that the doctors’ substandard care led to the deaths and ordered them to complete extra training.


Photographs show Hope and Porsha Ngumezi, left, and Nevaeh Crain. Photos by Danielle Villasana for ProPublica

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
April 17, 2026, 8:05 am

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The Texas Medical Board has disciplined three doctors ProPublica previously investigated whose patients died after receiving delayed or inappropriate pregnancy care under the state’s strict abortion ban.

Two of the doctors failed to properly intervene as a pregnant teenager repeatedly sought care for life-threatening complications, the board found. The third did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure to empty a miscarrying patient’s uterus, and she ultimately bled to death.

As ProPublica investigated those preventable deaths and five others across three states in the past few years, reporters found that abortion bans have influenced how doctors and hospitals respond to pregnancy complications. Facing risks of prison time and professional ruin, doctors have delayed key interventions until they can document that a fetus’ heart is no longer beating or that a case meets a narrow legal exception. Some physicians say their colleagues are discharging or transferring pregnant patients instead of taking responsibility for their care.

Doctors and lawyers have questioned why medical boards, which oversee physician licensing and investigate substandard care, have not played a more active role in guiding doctors on how to uphold medical standards within the constraints of the law. When asked by ProPublica in 2024 what recourse miscarrying patients had when a doctor denied them necessary treatment, the president of the Texas Medical Board said it had no say over criminal law but that patients could file a complaint and “vote with their feet” to seek care from another doctor.

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