Ken Paxton Sued by Family of Pregnant Texas Woman Who Died After Allegedly Being Denied Life-Saving Abortion

Tierra Walker had already lost twins to preeclampsia. When she became pregnant again and her health deteriorated, her family says she repeatedly asked for an abortion because she feared the pregnancy would kill her.

Walker, a 37-year-old from San Antonio, died at home in late December 2024 when she was about 20 weeks pregnant.

Her mother, son, widower and estate filed a 65-page complaint in Bexar County District Court on Tuesday 15 September 2026 against the Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, the head of the state medical board, the hospital system that treated her and three of her doctors, alleging deliberate indifference, discrimination and medical mistreatment.

The suit also asks the court to declare the state's abortion restrictions unconstitutional, and none of the allegations has been tested in court.

What the Complaint Alleges

The sequence set out in the filing begins in late October 2024. At 11 weeks pregnant, Walker went to the Kenwood Women's Health Clinic with high blood pressure and what the complaint describes as a severe blood clot in her left leg, and was moved to the hospital's main emergency room, according to ABC News' account of the lawsuit.

The complaint says doctors recorded the danger she was in. Two physicians allegedly noted during that admission that she was at high risk of clinical deterioration or death, and the filing cites a signed note stating she had acute issues posing a threat to life or bodily function, with a significant probability of sudden, clinically significant or life-threatening deterioration at any time in the short term. She was discharged.

The suit alleges the pregnancy itself became a barrier to care. Walker was denied standard medical tests explicitly because she was pregnant, according to the complaint, despite symptoms including a large blood clot and severe swelling in her left leg. Her family says she and her relatives asked hospital staff directly for an abortion.

She returned to the emergency room on 27 December 2024. Doctors diagnosed preeclampsia and noted in her records that delivering the baby might be the best treatment for it, the Dallas Morning News reported. She was found unresponsive at home days later by her teenage son, on his fifteenth birthday. The complaint gives her cause of death as hypertensive cardiovascular disease with superimposed preeclampsia.

Who Is Being Sued, and on What Basis

The defendants extend well beyond the treating clinicians. Alongside Paxton, who is named both personally and in his official capacity, the complaint lists Stephen Brint Carlton, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Bexar County Hospital District, which operates the University Health system, three individual doctors and the Bexar County district attorney Joe Gonzales.

The legal theory reaches past medical negligence. The family argues that Texas officials cannot claim immunity for depriving a person of a fundamental right to life, and asks the court to find the state's abortion restrictions unconstitutional. The case was brought by Amplify Legal, the litigation arm of the non-profit Abortion in America, together with the Marynell Maloney Law Firm.

The family's lawyer framed the case around what Walker knew was coming. 'She knew what preeclampsia was, she was terrified of it, and she was telling all of her doctors, my babies died from this, I don't want to die this time,' said Michelle Maloney, a medical malpractice attorney representing the family, at a news conference.

The responses so far have been limited. University Health told CBS News it could not comment on individual patients or litigation, while emphasising its commitment to medically appropriate and timely care. The Texas Tribune reported that the Texas Medical Board and UT Health San Antonio declined to respond and that the attorney general's office had not immediately done so. It is unclear whether the individual doctors have legal representation.

The Law the Case Is Aimed At

Texas enacted major abortion restrictions in 2021 through two separate laws with different mechanisms. Senate Bill 8 prohibited most abortions after the detection of embryonic cardiac activity, usually at around six weeks, and created a private civil enforcement system.

House Bill 1280 imposed a near-total prohibition subject to medical-emergency exceptions, taking effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Providers face criminal and civil penalties.

The argument at the centre of the suit concerns how the medical-emergency exception works in practice. The family contends that fear of prosecution left clinicians unwilling to act even where the exception should have applied, and the complaint alleges that more than 90 medical professionals were involved in or consulted on Walker's care before she died.

A later law does not resolve it, the family's lawyers say. Texas passed Senate Bill 31 in 2025, known as the Life of the Mother Act, to clarify when doctors may intervene in pregnancy-related emergencies, including that a threat need not be imminent before a physician acts.

It took effect on 20 June 2025, and the attorney Molly Duane has argued it would not have prevented Walker's death the previous year.

Public opinion in the state runs ahead of the statute. A 2025 University of Houston survey found 82 per cent of Texas registered voters supported legalising abortion to preserve a woman's physical health, and in a February 2024 University of Texas poll 85 per cent supported some legal access where a woman's health was seriously endangered.

Paxton is the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in the 3 November election, and the lawsuit was filed as he campaigns for the seat.