Family blames Texas’ “merciless” abortion ban for woman’s death, files lawsuit targeting Paxton, doctors

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, Stephen 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 has not responded 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.

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.

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. Céline 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.”