The family of Tierra Walker, a San Antonio resident who died while 20 weeks pregnant, has sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, state medical officials, doctors and health bodies, alleging that the state's abortion restrictions prevented care that could have saved her life.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, in Bexar County District Court in San Antonio. It alleges that Walker, who was 37, requested an abortion after being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and facing seizures and blood clots. The complaint says she was denied the procedure and told, “your baby is fine”.
Walker died of preeclampsia on December 30, 2024, two days after her final hospital visit. Preeclampsia is a severe high blood pressure condition in pregnancy that can be fatal.
The case is the first lawsuit over a death linked to an abortion ban and the first to directly name Paxton in such a case. It was brought by a malpractice firm and the abortion rights group Amplify Legal. The plaintiffs seek a jury trial, damages and a judgement declaring that Texas abortion laws violate the state constitution.
The defendants include Paxton; the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio; Stephen Brint Carlton, the executive director of the Texas Medical Board; Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales; several doctors; and the Bexar County Hospital District.
The complaint accuses the defendants of “deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment [that] ultimately caused her horrific and tragic death” in 2024. It argues that the state's near-total abortion ban led to Walker's death and violates both the Texas and U.S. Constitution.
The legal dispute will turn in part on whether Walker met the exception set out in Texas law. The lawsuit states that she qualified for an emergency abortion. Texas law allows an exception only where continuing a pregnancy puts someone “at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function”.
According to the lawsuit, Walker was repeatedly sent home after being told her condition would improve. It says University Health staff did not advise her that abortion could be a life-saving treatment, did not offer that treatment and did not suggest that she leave the state for care.
ProPublica first reported Walker's case last year. In its profile, ProPublica said as many as 90 medical professionals were consulted before her death.
Texas passed a law in 2025, after Walker's death, intended to clarify what constitutes a risk of death under the medical exception. The brief does not set out the provisions of that law.
Paxton is a Republican in a tight race for the U.S. Senate. His office and the Texas Medical Board did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday, Sept. 16. The response of hospital administrators and doctors named in the suit is not yet known, and it remains unclear whether the case will reach trial or end in a settlement.
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