Prison guard suffers stillbirth after being ordered to work after labor – and anti-life Texas AG now claims the fetus has NO rights
- Salia Issa was seven months pregnant on November 15, 2021 when she showed up for work as a warden at the John Middleton Unit prison in Abilene, Texas
- She began to feel severe pain in what she knew was labor, but officers didn’t let her go until a replacement arrived two hours later
- She went to the hospital and her baby was stillborn: Issa and her husband have sued, but the Attorney General argues that her unborn baby had no rights
A Texas woman is suing the prison where she works after being prevented from going to the hospital for two and a half hours because of severe pain in her seventh month of pregnancy – and then giving birth to her baby.
Salia Issa claims her bosses accused her of lying about her labor and said she must wait for a replacement to arrive before quitting her post.
Doctors told her that her child could have been saved if she had arrived at the hospital earlier on November 15, 2021.
Issa and her husband, Fiston Rukengeza, filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 2022, seeking monetary damages to cover their medical bills, pain and suffering, and other things, including the funeral costs of the unborn child.
Issa claims her supervisor told her, “You just want to go home.”
The state attorney general’s office and prison system have asked a judge to dismiss the case, and Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general, has argued that the unborn child has no rights.
Paxton is known for his strong pro-life stance, and on the day Roe v. Wade: “I look forward to defending the pro-life laws of Texas and the lives of all unborn children going forward.”
Salia Issa was seven months pregnant when, in November 2021, she felt severe pain that she knew was labor at work: her superiors allegedly accused her of lying and did not let her go to the hospital immediately. Your baby was stillborn
Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has argued in court filings that Issa’s unborn child has no rights
Texas immediately banned abortion when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade overturned: Earlier this month, Paxton celebrated the state Supreme Court temporarily blocking a lower court decision that ruled Texas’ abortion ban unlawful.
“Protecting the health of mothers and babies is of the utmost importance to the people of Texas, a moral principle enshrined in law,” Paxton said Aug. 5.
He vowed his office will “uphold the values of the people of Texas by doing everything in its power to protect mothers and babies.”
However, in response to Issa’s case, Paxton argues that the fetus had no rights.
“Just because multiple statutes define a person as including an unborn child does not mean the Fourteenth Amendment does the same,” the Texas attorney general’s office wrote in a March footnote, referring to the constitutional right to life.
Issa and her husband Fiston Rukengeza filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 2022
Issa drove herself to the hospital when her superiors finally let her leave the prison where she worked (pictured), but her baby was already dead
Ross Brennan, Issa’s attorney, wrote in a court filing that the state’s argument was “nothing more than an attempt to say — without explicitly saying so — that an unborn child at seven months’ gestation is not a person.”
Paxton’s position was first reported by The Texas Tribune.
Laura Hermer, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, described Texas’ legal stance as “a desire to have your cake and eat it too.”
“This would not be the first time that the state has tried to support the right to life of all fetuses, but its approach to protecting the health and safety of such fetuses is very different from that very narrow area of ’ban abortions,'” Hermer said.
Last week, US Judge Susan Hightower recommended that the case go partially ahead without addressing the fetal rights arguments.