Marlena Stell’s happiness turned to heartbreak after she found out about 9½ weeks into her pregnancy that she had suffered a miscarriage.

After she was told last year that the fetus did not have a heartbeat and she no longer had a viable pregnancy, the Texas woman asked her doctor to perform a dilation and curettage, or D and C — a standard procedure to remove the fetus following a miscarriage to help prevent infection or long-term health problems. Stell had the procedure after her first miscarriage in 2018 in Washington state, when she felt so much pain that she could not walk, and she wanted to go through with it again before trying again for a second child, she told The Washington Post.

But Stell was even more devastated to learn that because the procedure is also used during abortions, which a Texas law had greatly restricted, the doctor did not want to perform a D and C. Stell would be forced to carry her dead fetus for two weeks before she could find a provider to give her the medical intervention that physicians had denied her. ...