Sign up for The Brief , The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. At times speaking through tears, mothers, health care providers and community advocates implored Texas’ maternal mortality committee to fully review deaths from the first two years since the state banned nearly all abortions. At a public meeting Friday, members of the committee defended the decision to skip from 2021 to 2024 as a necessary step to offer more timely recommendations. “I know that we've always talked about how we want to be as contemporary as possible,” Nakeenya Wilson, a former member of the committee, testified. “What I am concerned about is the fact that the two years that we were skipping are the most crucial years of reproductive health in this country's history.” Texas banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in September 2021, and in summer 2022, expanded that ban to all abortions from the moment of conception, except to save the life of the pregnant patient. There have since been countless stories of doctors delaying or denying pregnancy care due to fear and confusion about how the law would be applied. At least three women have died, ProPublica has reported , due to delayed or mismanaged miscarriage care. Doctors found to have violated the law face up to life in prison, fines of at least $100,000 and the loss of their medical license. Texas’ maternal mortality committee, responsible for reviewing maternal deaths and near-misses, has come under increased scrutiny since these laws went into effect. Some of the criticisms lay at the feet of the Legislature, which created the committee in 2013. The original statute prohibits the review of abortion-related deaths, a caveat that even committee members were not aware of until a few months ago. The Legislature also allocated money last year with the intent of cutting Texas out of the federal maternal death tracking system, despite committee members’ concerns. Lawmakers also expanded the committee, replacing the single community advocate position with two community member roles, one representing urban areas and one for rural areas. This change pushed Wilson, a Black woman who experienced a traumatic birth, off the committee. She was replaced by two doctors; the rural position went to an anti-abortion OB/GYN from San Antonio. The committee’s last report, released in September, showed that maternal deaths surged in 2020 and 2021, even with COVID deaths excluded. Black women remain far more likely to die than anyone else, although every group except white women saw their odds of dying increase. That same month, the committee announced its next report would look at deaths from 2024. The committee, which often works on a several year delay, has previously skipped certain years to try to catch up. At Friday’s meeting, Dr. Carla Ortique, a Houston OB/GYN and committee chair, rejected the implication of political influence and said the fact that the committee was skipping the first two years of the abortion ban was a “coincidence.” “There was no input from the executive or any other branch of our state government regarding our plans for cohort review,” she said. “It is imperative that we become more contemporary in our review process.” Ortique didn’t discuss the recently reported Texas deaths, but did address the fallout from similar reporting in Georgia. After ProPublica reported on two pregnancy-related deaths the Georgia maternal mortality committee deemed preventable, the state dismissed all members of the committee. Ortique reminded members of Texas’ committee that they signed confidentiality agreements, and said that “regardless of personal belief and opinion,” members must respect the integrity of the process. “The work that we do is for the greater good,” she said. “It is critical that none of us act individually in a way that threatens the ability to continue the work assigned to this committee.” She also said the committee would be dropping its request that the state health agency not redact personal information from the files they review. The committee has long argued that the redaction process was an unnecessary delay since their work is confidential. Ortique attributed this change of position to a new feature in the state’s data collection system that can automatically redact information more quickly. These announcements were met with frustration from the community members who filled the room to testify. Judy Ward, of Richardson, north of Dallas, testified as a concerned citizen, and said there was a growing sense that the committee’s work was becoming politicized. “I suggest that this committee needs to bend over backwards to avoid such an interpretation,” she said. “Please, don't be afraid to look at all the data and prove those of us who are skeptical of the motives of some of the committee members, prove us wrong.” Serita Fontanesi, with the advocacy group United for Reproductive and Gender Equity, spoke as a Black woman preparing to start a family. She said she was worried about the high risk of maternal mortality or morbidity in Texas, and whether her doctors would be able to provide the full spectrum of care. “Furthermore, should I or my child not make it, I am not confident that my state and this committee would do their due diligence to ensure that it doesn’t happen to someone else, to investigate what went wrong,” she said. She urged the committee to rethink their decision to not fully review the 2022 and 2023 deaths. “Too many birthing people and their children whose lives were lost, perhaps for preventable reasons, will go unheard, unseen, unremembered,” she said. “Their deaths will be in vain.”Bluesky sees growing pains
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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is a “fundamental act of justice” after decades of repression, but it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Mideast. Biden spoke at the White House hours after after rebel groups completed a takeover of the country after more than a dozen years of violent civil war and decades of leadership by Assad and his family. The outgoing Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump were working to make sense of new threats and opportunities across the Middle East. Biden credited action by the U.S. and its allies for weakening Syria’s backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. He said “for the first time” that they could no longer defend Assad’s grip on power. “Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” Biden said, after a meeting with his national security team at the White House. Trump said Sunday that Assad had fled his country, which his family had ruled for decades, because close ally Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “was not interested in protecting him any longer.” Those comments on Trump’s social media platform came a day after he used another post to decry the possibility of the U.S. intervening militarily in Syria to aid the rebels, declaring, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.” The Biden administration had no intention of intervening, according to Biden’s national security adviser. The U.S has about 900 troops in Syria, including forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group. Biden said he intended those for troops to remain, adding that U.S. forces on Sunday conducted “dozens” of what he called “precision air strikes” on IS camps and operations in Syria. The Syrian opposition that brought down Assad is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The Biden administration has designated the group as a terrorist organization and says it has links to al-Qaida, although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham says it has since broken ties with al-Qaida. “We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” He added that the groups are “saying the right things now.” “But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said. Assad’s fall adds to an already tense situation throughout much of region on many fronts, including Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and its fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, 2025, made a connection between the upheaval in Syria and Russia’s war in Ukraine, noting that Assad’s allies in Moscow, as well as in Iran, the main sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, “are in a weakened state right now.” Vice President-elect JD Vance, a veteran of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, wrote on own social media Sunday to express skepticism about the insurgents. “Many of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell,” he said, using another acronym for IS. Trump has suggested that Assad’s ouster can advance the prospects for an end to fighting in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022. Trump wrote that Putin’s government “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine” and the Republican called for an immediate ceasefire, a day after meeting in Paris with the French and Ukrainian leaders. Daniel B. Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said the American military presence will continue in eastern Syria but was “solely to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and has nothing to do with other aspects of this conflict.” “We call on all parties in Syria to protect civilians, particularly those from Syria’s minority communities to respect international military norms and to work to achieve a resolution to include the political settlement,” Shapiro said. “Multiple actors in this conflict have a terrible track record to include Assad’s horrific crimes, Russia’s indiscriminate aerial bomb bombardment, Iranian-back militia involvement and the atrocities of ISIS,” he added. Shapiro, however, was careful not to directly say Assad had been deposed by the insurgents. “If confirmed, no one should shed any tears over the Assad regime,” he said. As they pushed toward the Syrian capital of Damascus, the opposition freed political detainees from government prisons. The family of missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice renewed calls to find him. “To everyone in Syria that hears this, please remind people that we’re waiting for Austin,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said in comments that hostage advocacy groups spread on social media. “We know that when he comes out, he’s going to be fairly dazed & he’s going to need lots of care & direction. Direct him to his family please!” Tice disappeared in 2012 outside Damascus, amid intensification of what became a civil war stretching more than a decade. We’ve remained committed to returning him to his family,” Biden said at the White House. “We believe he’s alive, we think we can get him back but we have no direct evidence to that yet. And Assad should be held accountable.” The president added: “We have to identify where he is.”