Who Is Josseli Barnica? Texan Woman Dies After Being Denied Miscarriage Care

A woman who died after suffering a miscarriage in a Texas hospital has been named as Josseli Barnica.
She is latest woman whose deadly experience with restrictive abortion laws is making headlines – here is what we know about who she was and what happened to her.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, each state was given the power to determine its own abortion laws with some more restrictive than others. Since then, multiple stories have emerged about how these laws have impacted the healthcare provided to pregnant women.
In September this year, Georgia woman Amber Thurman, who died after not receiving timely medical care, was dubbed the first “preventable” abortion death since these different states brought bans in, not-for-profit investigative journalism site ProPublica reported at the time.
Now, ProPublicahas reviewed a summary of Barnica’s medical records and revealed the story of the 28-year-old mother, who died in 2021, after miscarrying at 17 weeks pregnant at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest.
While 2021 was before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it was after Texas had passed S.B. 8, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
Barnica should have been offered intervention, to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus, several medical experts, including OB-GYN Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, told ProPublica.
HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that operates HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest, told the outlet that doctors exercised independent judgment.
“Our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations,” it said. Newsweek has contacted HCA Healthcare, via email, for any further comment.
On September 3, 2021, Barnica’s miscarriage was “in progress” with the fetus pressed against her cervix, leaving it exposed to bacteria, according to hospital records cited by ProPublica.
But she was reportedly left without intervention for 40 hours, because doctors “had to wait until there was no heartbeat” and “it would be a crime to give her an abortion,” Barnica’s husband said she told him after he had rushed to her side.
Barnica died of an infection three days after she delivered, with the cause of death listed as, “sepsis due to acute bacterial endometritis and cervicitis following spontaneous abortion of a 17-week still birth fetus (177 grams) with retained products of conception.”
“Retained products of conception” means tissue that grew during Barnica’s pregnancy and remained after her miscarriage.
Barnica, who met her husband at a local soccer game in 2019, was a mother who wanted to give her daughter a sibling, ProPublica reported.
She was an immigrant from Honduras who lived in Houston and installed drywall to earn money, some of which went home to support her mother.
After Barnica’s daughter was born in 2020, she wrote on social media: “God bless my family. Our first Christmas with our Princess. I love them.”
As with several other cases of pregnant women dying in states with restrictive abortion laws, outrage followed the news about Barnica.
The National Abortion Federation was quick to issue a statement, likening Barnica’s story to other women who have suffered, what the organization called, “entirely preventable deaths.”
“Josseli Barnica should be alive today,” it said, before adding: “Abortion restrictions and bans do not stop the need for this essential health care; they just make it more difficult to access by forcing patients and providers into impossible situations.
“No one should be afraid to access medical care, and no health care provider should fear prosecution for giving the best standard of care.”
LiveAction, a global anti-abortion organization founded by pro-life figure Lila Rose, has not mentioned anything about Barnica’s case specifically.
But, on Tuesday, it posted one of its positions, that it has argued before: “Abortion is never medically necessary. Emergency c-section(s) or preterm delivery are standard practices of care in instances of medical emergencies. The extra steps of injecting a child with feticide to stop her heart or ripping her limbs off of her body are not needed to care for the mother.”
Newsweek has contacted the National Right to Life, America’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization, for comment.
Abortion More Important Than Immigration for Voters
Abortion has long been a major issue in this election, with the Democrats pushing themselves as the party of reproductive freedom and warning that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump plans to bring in a national ban on abortion, something he has denied multiple times.
Last week, abortion overtook immigration and became the second-most important issue for voters, according to polling conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, on behalf of Newsweek.
Over 16 months, the firm asked 34,800 eligible voters: “Which issues are most likely to determine how you vote in the November 2024 Presidential Election? You may select up to three.”
Only four issues out of 24 were repeatedly selected by more than two in five respondents: the economy, abortion, immigration and healthcare.
The economy was named the most important election issue for voters in every survey conducted between July 2023 and October this year, regularly being cited by around 60 percent of respondents.
Abortion and immigration have both been competing for second place across the arc of the polling, but abortion was the issue that has risen most, and has overtaken immigration in recent months.
Abortion was cited as a key issue by 21 percent of respondents in the first poll of July 2023, and was cited by 38 percent of respondents in the latest poll of October 2024.
By contrast, immigration was cited as a key issue by 30 percent of respondents in the first poll of July 2023, and was cited by 36 percent of respondents in the latest poll of October 2024.