CONVERGE is horrified and heartbroken to hear of the death of Tierra Walker, a 37 year old from San Antonio, Texas who died after being denied lifesaving abortion care. Tierra’s story is difficult for anyone to read, but we know it is especially painful for anyone who has experienced the same injustices Tierra and her family faced during her pregnancy. Source: Parra, K. S., Lizzie Presser, and Lexi. (2025, November 19). “Ticking time bomb”: A pregnant mother kept getting sicker. She died after she couldn’t get an abortion in texas. ProPublica.
Stories like Tierra’s should never exist, but we know they are far too common. In the United States, Black birthing people are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts – a disparity created, in part, by structural and medical racism and policy failures. Source: Hoyert, D. (2023). Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2021. National Center for Health Statistics (U.S.). https://doi.org/10.15620/cdc:124678
Knowing that most of these deaths, including Tierra’s, are preventable is what drives us at CONVERGE to work towards a world in which all people are able to access the reproductive health care they need when they need it. Research by our team is working urgently to understand the policies and systems that lead to adverse reproductive health outcomes and to provide evidence that drives meaningful change.
For example, CONVERGE faculty are documenting how reproductive-health policies shape the health of people with chronic disease, Medicaid coverage of medically necessary abortions reduces severe maternal morbidity, The vagueness in abortion definitions and ban exceptions is having deadly effects.
We are heartbroken by the death of #TierraWalker, a 37-year-old Texan who @propublica.org just reported died after being denied lifesaving abortion care. Read our full statement on her story and the structural failures behind her preventable death at www.converge.pitt.edu/news/converg...
