The details of Josseli Barnica’s death (pictured) were released this week. She died in 2021 as a result of anti-abortion laws
Josseli Barnica can’t vote in the upcoming United States presidential election. She died as a result of the Texas abortion ban.
The details of her death were released this week, crystallising one of the central questions of the US presidential election on Tuesday.
Josseli, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died from sepsis while miscarrying. Doctors delayed helping the 28-year-old for 40 hours because a foetal heartbeat could be detected. This left her vulnerable to infections.
Usually doctors would offer medication to speed up labour, or empty the patient’s uterus. But this was 2 September 2021—a day after Texas’s six-week abortion ban took effect. Doctors are only legally allowed to intervene if there is a vaguely worded “medical emergency”. They risked 99 years in prison and fines of £77,000 if they were found to be breaking the law.
Josseli is another victim of the war over women’s reproductive choices. She died as a result of state-level anti-choice legislation which hardliners have been pushing through.
Helen is coordinator for National Mobilisation for Reproductive Justice and national organiser for Radical Women. “Even where abortion is legal there can be very little access,” she explained to Socialist Worker.
“I live in Washington state, which has enshrined abortion, but in most of the state there are no clinics that perform abortion.”
“The answer has to be a very powerful mass movement that is not reliant on either party as a primary focus for winning back reproductive rights,” she argued.
Abortion rights across the US have come under huge attacks under Republican and Democrat administrations.
Donald Trump nominated three anti-choice judges to the Supreme Court when he was last president. They then played an instrumental role in ruling that women don’t have a constitutional right to abortion.
In 2022, in the case known as Dobbs v Jackson, the court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade judgement. It had provided a constitutional right to access abortion.
Now, it’s up to the state legislature to make their own laws on reproductive rights.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in August found that a majority of voters, including 34 percent of Republicans, want the next president to protect or increase abortion access.
Trump himself has oscillated wildly over the question of abortion. But he’s surrounded himself with vile anti-choice bigots in a bid to appeal to the conservative vote.
Helen explained that Trump’s “base is very anti-abortion” but the Trump campaign “is downplaying it” because it fears losing votes.
“In office I have no doubt they would pass measures to restrict or ban abortions,” she said. “His team is putting forward a list of executive orders they’d push through.
“One is a federal proclamation that the foetus is a human being with inalienable rights. Why doesn’t Harris put out an executive order saying the opposite?”
Harris says she will bring back the protections of Roe v Wade, but such a legal move would be difficult without a Democratic majority in Congress.
What she could do—and what the Biden administration failed to do—is put in measures that get around the decision.
This could mean building “field hospitals” providing abortions across state borders. It could mean launching a political war on the bigots who want to deny women the choice over their own bodies.
Instead, Harris has teamed up with vicious anti-choice bigots, such as right wing Republican Liz Cheney, in a desperate scramble to get enough votes on 5 November. Cheney still wants to restrict abortions to all but the most extreme cases—such as when the mother’s life is at risk.
Helen described Harris’ promises on reproductive rights as “very weak and practically meaningless”. “Harris says that if a Republican senate passed a law attacking abortion rights, then she wouldn’t sign it,” she said. “But that’s the least she should do.”
“The Democrats put abortion rights as the defining election issue but then don’t deliver. It feeds huge cynicism. Some people who are voting for Trump previously supported the Democrats but see they’ve done very little in their interest.”
Helen said there’s “a big problem” of reducing the fight for abortion rights to voting Democrat. There’s a certain perspective of “leave it up to the politicians, they know best, just donate and that’s all you need to do,” she said.
“There’s a need to rebuild on-the-ground activism. It comes out in strikes, in Black Lives Matter, in #MeToo, but the Democrats tend to pacify things.”
The National Mobilisation for Reproductive Justice has been working hard to try and get trade unions and workers mobilised in defence of abortion rights.
Helen said that “organised labour has tied its hands to the Democrats but also has the power to mobilise in huge numbers and fight for change”.
“We’ve been lining up unions, many of which have come out in support of abortion rights. To then get them to actively move is another task. There’s an urgency in labour unions and social movements coming together.
“Trump demonises the left, migrants, trans+ people—we have to come together to defend those groups and to oppose the prominence of capitalist parties.”
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