Tierra Walker was 37 years old, 20 weeks pregnant, and living with diabetes, hypertension, obesity and severe asthma when her doctors saw those risks rising in real time. She was hospitalized again and again and asked for an abortion each time. Instead of being told her options, she was reportedly sent home, with doctors telling her, "It's not the baby, the baby's fine," according to her aunt, LaTanya Walker. Days after her last discharge, Tierra Walker died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease with preeclampsia. Her 15-year-old son found her.

Texas's abortion ban only allows exceptions when a pregnancy risks death or serious harm to a major bodily function, but Walker's case shows how hard that standard is to apply in an actual hospital room. Her family is now suing Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas Medical Board executive director Stephen Brint Carlton, a Bexar County prosecutor and the doctors and hospital system that treated her, in the first lawsuit of its kind to argue a specific death was caused by an abortion ban. The case asks a court to find that Texas's abortion laws violate both the state and U.S. Constitution.

Families should not have to sue for the right to basic maternal healthcare, and doctors should not have to guess how sick a patient must become before they can act. Tierra Walker's case could set the standard for whether the state can be held responsible when its laws cost a life.

Sign the petition to demand accountability from Texas officials in Tierra Walker's death, before another family loses a mother to a law that couldn't tell them how sick was sick enough.