1). “Nebraska Bill Paves the Way for Criminalization of Miscarriages”, Apr 16, 2025, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “Women denied abortions in Texas speak out against new bill, warn of greater harm: 'How dead do I need to be to get an abortion? I'm still asking that question.' ”, Apr 16, 2025, Brammhi Balarajan, Trending News Reporter, Chron, at < https://www.chron.com/news/
3). “Project 2025 What it Means for Women Families and Gender Justice”, Sep 17, 2024, anon, National Women's Law Center, < https://nwlc.org/resource/
4). “Anti-vaccine advocates battle over narrative in West Texas, downplaying role of measles in deaths: After Daisy Hildebrand died of measles, her death was made public first by Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine skeptic who blamed the hospital for fumbling her care. Daisy’s father told The Texas Tribune he never to spoke to Malone”, Apr 16, 2025, Pooja Salhotra & Terri Langford, The Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/
5). “Dr. Peter Hotez: Declining vaccination rates leave Texas vulnerable to measles, other diseases”, Mar 17, 2025, Evan MacDonald, Houston Chronicle, at < https://www.houstonchronicle.
6). RFK Jr, Visits families whose children died from Measles, Apr 6, 2025, “X”, at < https://x.com/SecKennedy/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Texas has become, along with Florida and to a somewhat lesser degree Missouri, the leading place where fascist policies are first brought out and passed into state law. In Item 1)., “Nebraska Bill Paves ….”, Valenti discusses two developments in the Texas State Legislature. One in which: “Republicans claim SB31 & HB44 would ‘clarify’ the state’s ban and make it easier for doctors to provide life-saving care. In reality, the bill could revive a century-old ban that allows for the prosecution of abortion funds, helpers, and maybe even patients themselves”. The other in which the State Legislators are: “.... advancing a bill that would require wastewater management plants to test for abortion medication, birth control pills, and hormones associated with gender affirming care. Why? You guessed it! Because they claim it poisons the environment.” Not discussed in this article is the fact that Legislation that would allow for the execution of women who travel out of state for legal abortions and return to Fascist Texas where they would be targeted. An extreme movement, called the Abortion Abolitionists, is eager to begin show trials and executions of women who had the temerity to exercise their right to travel and obtain medical care elsewhere. In Item 2)., “Women denied abortions ….”, there is a report about a group of women, denied abortion care in Texas, who held a press conference denouncing SB31 & HB44 and noting that:
“.... this bill could pave the way for the prosecution of pregnant patients and the loved ones who help them by reviving a century-old abortion ban.
“By amending the 1925 abortion ban, Texas lawmakers could argue that this makes pre-Roe bills once again enforceable. Attorney General Ken Paxton signaled after the fall of Roe that he would follow pre-Roe statutes, until a federal judge blocked prosecutors from pursuing charges against pregnant patients.”
In the PDF version of Item 3)., “Project 2025 What it Means ….”, The National Women's Law Center provided an analysis of the role of Project 2025 in guiding the fascist Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth Operatives in their attacks on women's rights. The report notes that Project 2025 present methods to impose far-right policies on the American People very quickly and to impose an authoritarian regime on the U.S. The overall tone is set in the first bullet point on Page 3 where it states that: “Project 2025 disavows abortion as part of health care. It seeks to recast HHS as the 'Department of Life' ” ….”. The report goes on from pg 3 to pg 5 listing a large number of specific policies the far-right wants to use to impose their Dark Ages agenda on the rest of us.
In Item 4)., “Anti-vaccine advocates”, & Item 5). “Dr. Peter Hotez: ….”, some of the facts about the Measles Outbreak are discussed. Hotez notes that a 95% vaccination rate is needed to maintain population immunity (herd immunity) for measles because of its high level of contagion. Item 4 notes that vaccination rates for children in some West Texas areas had fallen to 82%. Not discussed in either article is the fact that maintaining population immunity is important to protect vulnerable individuals who cannot be vaccinated.
Item 6)., “RFK Jr, Visits ….”, is a Post on X by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after a visit he made to the West Texas community where the two children died from measles (a third death, of an adult occurred elsewhere). Even in the text of the X post RFK Jr. included disinformation posting that: “I also visited with these two extraordinary healers, Dr. Richard Bartlett and Dr. Ben Edwards who have treated and healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin.” RFK Jr posed for photo ops with the two stricken families. Item 4)., reported that circumventing the wishes of one of the dead girls whose family wanted to grieve in private that:
“Instead of a clinical state or hospital press release, news of Daisy’s death came from the highly-charged writings of vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone, a physician once labeled by The New York Times as a 'Covid misinformation star.'
“ 'Breaking news: Another Texas child dies a tragic death after recovering from measles,' Malone wrote in a Saturday evening post on X. The Virginia doctor directed his 1.3 million followers to a 930-word substack essay where he accuses the University Medical Center in Lubbock of mismanaging Daisy’s case and purports that she died not from measles, but from sepsis after having been ill from mononucleosis and tonsillitis. She had already recovered from measles, Malone wrote. ….
“It’s the latest skirmish in an ongoing war for control over the narrative around the measles outbreak, how the public should respond to it and the people who have lost children to the disease. Local public health officials, the state health department and leading epidemiologists have been encouraging vaccination to prevent measles' spread, while vaccine skeptics and the nation’s health secretary are downplaying the effects of the illness and platforming unconventional therapies.
“The mixed messaging is an added headache to local health departments — along with the expected cuts in the state’s already meager public health resources — and threatens to push the end of the outbreak even further. ….
“For months, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy founded but stepped away from after becoming the nation’s health secretary, had been generating news articles and videos about measles, pointing to outbreaks in highly vaccinated communities and amplifying possible side effects of the MMR vaccine, which are generally mild.
“Leaders of the organization’s broadcast arm visited Gaines County to interview the parents of six-year-old Kayley Fehr, the first child to have died from measles in a decade. The Mennonite couple told CHD they stand by their decision to not vaccinate Kayley or their four surviving children who recovered from measles. CHD-TV Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker also casts doubt on Kayley's cause of death, insisting that she had a bacterial pneumonia that doctors could have treated differently. ….
“By late March, Covenant Children’s Hospital had treated several unvaccinated measles patients who suffered from vitamin A toxicity. Some of those patients had reported using vitamin A to prevent measles, chief medical officer Dr. Lara Johnson said in a statement.
“On the day of Daisy’s funeral, Kennedy posted on X a photo of himself with members of the Mennonite community along with Edwards and Odessa doctor Richard Bartlett, writing that both physicians have 'treated and healed' Mennonite children using budesonide and clarithromycin. Neither method has been scientifically proven to successfully treat measles. ….
“Meanwhile, state funding for immunization and outreach — which is mostly performed by public health departments — has remained stagnant in Texas. According to The Associated Press, Lubbock receives a $254,000 state grant each year for immunization efforts. That number has not increased in 15 years. In 2023, Texas spent only $17 per person on public health, among the lowest in the country, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center. A decade ago, it was $19 per person.”
Meanwhile the Republicans who rule Texas, using vicious levels of voter purges, voter suppression, vote theft, and other types of intimidation, keep pursuing ever more draconian policies. One special issue is keeping the vote of Harris County to a minimum. Harris County, that includes the City of Houston and many suburbs, has a population of 4 million with over 2 ½ million voters. This Dark Ages political operation is pushing Texas into a special hell of reaction.
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Nebraska Bill Paves the Way for Criminalization of Miscarriages
Click to skip ahead: In the States, news from Nebraska, Texas, and more. Stats & Studies has Guttmacher’s 2024 abortion data, and a new study showing that teens are disproportionately impacted by abortion bans. In the Nation, a few quick hits. You Love to See It congratulates the latest TIME 100 inductee. Finally, Coming Soon has a sneak peek of tomorrow’s newsletter.
In the States
Let’s talk about Nebraska, where the cruelty is most definitely the point. Legislators advanced a bill yesterday that would require abortion providers to dispose of fetal and embryonic remains by burial or cremation. I first told you about LB632 last month, when I pointed out that this mandate would be limited to ‘elective’ abortions—proving that the intent was never about the ‘dignity’ of fetuses, as Republicans claim, but punishing women.
There’s been quite a lot of debate in the Nebraska legislature over the past few days about just that—with Sen. Ashlei Spivey remarking that the bill “disrespects patients by essentially imposing a funeral requirement for abortion.” And Sen. Megan Hunt asked just “how much blood has to be on the pad” before women would be required to give their fetus a burial.
What worries me about this legislation, though, isn’t just its cruelty, but the precedent it sets—and what it could mean for the criminalization of any pregnancy loss.
After all, we just watched a young woman in Georgia arrested over her miscarriage, charged with ‘concealing a death’ and ‘abandoning a dead body’ after she placed her fetal remains in the trash. A bill like the one in Nebraska would make it easier for prosecutors to argue that women who don’t dispose of their miscarriages ‘properly’ are breaking the law.
Indeed, Nebraska Sen. Dan Lonowski said during the floor debate that, “The absence of regulation in many states means babies can be treated as medical waste." And bill sponsor Sen. Ben Hansen said if the bill isn’t passed that providers might dispose of fetal remains by “throwing them in a dumpster.” That’s exactly what Georgia cops and prosecutors accused this young woman of doing.
If all of that wasn’t clear enough that the legislation is meant to target any sort of pregnancy loss, consider something else Hansen said, as reported by Nebraska Public Media:
“These are human bodies, and as such, they deserve to be treated with some measure of human respect. All of us understand the need and desire to treat dead bodies, including the bodies of miscarriages, stillborn children, with dignity.” (Emphasis mine)
They are not even bothering to hide it. All of which is to say, this isn’t just about one piece of legislation in one state—it’s a major hint over the future of pregnancy criminalization for all of us.
Nebraska’s LB632 also highlights another anti-abortion strategy: conservative claims that fetal remains ‘poison’ the groundwater or are unsafe for the environment. Hansen argues as much in his legislation—right as Texas is advancing a bill that would require wastewater management plants to test for abortion medication, birth control pills, and hormones associated with gender affirming care. Why? You guessed it! Because they claim it poisons the environment.
If you missed Abortion, Every Day’s reporting on that legislation, make sure to read it here. We are going to see more and more legislation like this—bills that make false claims about the environmental impact of abortion pills and birth control. The sooner we familiarize ourselves with them, the better.
In related news, thanks to Fast Company for picking up this story. I hope we see a few more outlets cover the Texas bill and what it means more broadly for abortion rights.
While we’re on Texas, let’s do a little catch up on the Trojan Horse bill I’ve been warning about. Click here for a refresher, but the short version is that Republicans claim SB31 & HB44 would ‘clarify’ the state’s ban and make it easier for doctors to provide life-saving care. In reality, the bill could revive a century-old ban that allows for the prosecution of abortion funds, helpers, and maybe even patients themselves.
The legislation would also mandate a state-run ‘education’ course on abortion law for doctors. (We’ve seen what this looks like before, in South Dakota, and it ain’t good!)
Before AED’s report, the bill was flying through the legislature with bipartisan support and glowing press coverage; now, lawmakers are being called on by abortion rights activists to amend or scrap the bill. (Though, unfortunately, some Democrats are still on board.)
The most powerful voices in opposition to Texas’ Trojan Horse legislation have been the women who sued the state after being denied health- and life-saving abortion care. The plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas held a press conference yesterday about the legislation, saying that if the bill passed, reproductive rights in Texas would turn from "darkness into a black hole."
Hollie Cunningham, who had to leave the state twice for abortion care after two of her pregnancies were diagnosed with anencephaly, said, “This bill could prosecute a marine for helping his pregnant wife get care in Texas, care for babies who had no chance of survival.” And plaintiff Kaitlyn Kash said, “Our fear comes from the fact that we had people who loved us help us.”
Watch a video of the women speaking to legislators here, or read the letter they sent Texas lawmakers, urging them to oppose the legislation.
The other news out of Texas today is that Senate Republicans were able to pass SB33, legislation that bans any state funding from going toward helping women get out-of-state abortions. Since Roe was overturned, several cities—like San Antonio and Austin—launched abortion funds that provided financial support for things like travel and lodging. (State funding going directly for abortion care is prohibited by law).
Under SB33, even that kind of ancillary support would be banned. The bill prohibits “paying for, planning, or executing plans for travel accommodations, including transportation, meals, or lodging, with the intent of facilitating the procurement of an abortion, regardless of the location at which the abortion occurs.”
In response to the Senate vote this week, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issued a statement accusing “rogue, liberal cities” of “skirt[ing] state law,” and saying that SB 33 “draws a line in the sand.”
The bill is part of a broader trend across the country—with Republicans honing in their attacks on abortion funds, or anyone who helps abortion patients to leave their state or obtain abortion medication. With data showing that the number of abortions isn’t going down, conservatives are growing increasingly pissed off that patients have been able to get care despite bans.
I mean, it was just a few weeks ago that Alabama lost their years-long fight for the right to prosecute abortion funds. You can be sure that we’ll see more cases and bills like this in the coming months—all targeting community support. They can’t help but reveal who they really are.
Quick hits:
New Orleans, Louisiana will soon have reproductive health vending machines that dispense condoms and emergency contraception;
Five South Carolina doctors are suing over the state’s abortion ban, arguing that denying women care violates their religious faith;
Bloomberg Law reports that a lawsuit challenging Arizona’s law banning abortion after a patient learns their fetus has a genetic abnormality has been dismissed;
And Idaho women harmed by the state’s ban say that a judge’s ruling allowing abortion for life-threatening pregnancies even if death isn’t ‘imminent,’ “really doesn't change much of anything.”
Stats & Studies
A few bits of research to highlight today. First, it will come as no surprise that new research finds that abortion bans disproportionately impact teenagers. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that a whopping two-thirds of teen girls 13 to 17 years-old live in states that ban or seriously restrict abortion access.
From study author Laura Lindberg, a public health professor at Rutgers University:
"Minors are often targeted by restrictive policies and less able to use routes to abortion care common for adults—traveling to another state or using telehealth—leaving them disproportionately impacted. Without access to abortion, these girls have lost the ability to control their lives and their futures."
You all know how I feel about restrictions on teens. Not only is it an absurd hypocrisy to claim that teens are too young to have a medical procedure, but old enough to go through childbirth—but what happens to teenagers today comes for the rest of us tomorrow. They’ve always been the canaries in the coal mines.
Abortion, Every Day relies on reader support to publish. Please consider upgrading your subscription or donating to the newsletter directly.
In other research news, the Guttmacher Institute—which publishes a “Monthly Provision Study” on abortion and abortion access—just released their data looking at all of 2024. You should check out their full analysis, but here are a few highlights in the meantime:
The group reports that there were more than 1 million abortions in 2024—but remember, that number is likely on the low side, because it doesn’t include patients outside of the formal healthcare system (like those who may have gotten pills from friends or online).
The state with the largest decrease in abortions in 2024 was (unsurprisingly) Florida. Thanks to the 6-week ban that went into effect in May, there were over 12k fewer abortions provided in the state last year than in 2023. South Carolina also saw a large decrease, due to a 6-week ban enacted in September 2023.
The states where we saw increases in abortions were Wisconsin (where clinics just started providing care again in late 2023), Arizona, California, Kansas, Virginia, and Ohio.
Guttmacher also reports that there’s been a rise in abortions via online-only telehealth clinics—from 10% in 2023 to 14% in 2024. We know from other studies, too—like WeCount—that there’s been a massive rise in abortion medication and telehealth.
That said, I thought the most interesting takeaway from Guttmacher’s report was that there are still quite a lot of people traveling out-of-state for in-person care. In fact, over 155k people crossed state lines for abortion care in 2024, making up 15% of all abortions provided in states without total bans.
The states with the highest number of abortions provided to out-of-state residents were Illinois, North Carolina, Kansas, and New Mexico. In some of those states, out-of-staters represented the vast majority of patients: Sixty-nine percent of abortions in New Mexico were given to those traveling from out of state, and in Kansas, it was 71% of patients.
Isaac Maddow-Zimmet, a lead researcher at Guttmacher, told the Orlando Weekly that the large number of patients leaving their states was surprising in some ways:
“[W]e know that that travel is incredibly costly, needs an enormous amount of support from providers, from practical support organizations, from abortion funds—and so it is really somewhat surprising that it has been able to be maintained. It speaks to the real motivation on the part of both patients and people supporting patients to make sure that people can access care.”
In other words, it’s a terrific time to support your local abortion or practical support fund! For more on Guttmacher’s 2024 report, watch PBS NewsHour’s segment below:
In the Nation
NOTUS takes a look at coming interstate court battles over the criminalization of abortion providers shipping pills into anti-choice states;
The National Women’s Law Center details how the Trump administration has started to enact their Project 2025 agenda;
The Nation on how clergy are showing up for abortion clinics;
And in international news, a new study out of Canada looks at how abortion access improved after mifepristone was made available at community pharmacies in Ontario.
You Love to See It
A huge congratulations to Julie Burkhart of Wellspring Health Access, who was just named as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People! From TIME:
“Burkhart is no stranger to the ups and downs of this fight—she has faced arson, death threats, and legal obstacles while starting clinics in Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. She’s now the co-owner of Hope Clinic in Illinois, which has seen a 700% increase in out-of-state patients since abortion restrictions went into effect in neighboring states. Burkhart is devoted to making sure patients can get abortion care, no matter where they live.”
Unfortunately, Wellspring—which is Wyoming’s only full-service abortion clinic—has had to stop providing abortions recently, thanks to a new law requiring clinics to be licensed as surgical centers. While Burkhart and other abortion providers and activists battle that decision in court, Wellspring is still taking calls and helping people however they can.
To learn more about Julie, consider listening to this 2023 interview she did with Slate about the arson attack against her clinic and violence against providers:
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Texas women denied care speak out against 'dangerous' new abortion bill
Several women who were denied medical care under Texas' strict abortion ban spoke out Tuesday against a bill advancing through the legislature that they say could criminalize pregnant patients.
The plaintiffs behind Zurawski v. Texas, a landmark case that asked Texas to clarify the scope of the "medical emergency" exception under its abortion ban, rallied against the bill SB 31 at a press conference Tuesday. The advocates say the bill would open a backdoor for a 1925 abortion ban that could allow for the prosecution of pregnant patients and does not include an exemption for fatal fetal diagnosis.
The women behind the case come from different backgrounds, but are united in their opposition toward this bill. Throughout their experiences, they said the state has reduced them to "collateral damage," "a shattered heart," and "a walking casket."
If the bill passes, advocates say that the landscape for reproductive rights in Texas could turn from "darkness into a black hole." In validating old statutes, the women who fled Texas to get an abortion say the bill paves the way for them to be "hunted."
Hollie Cunningham, one of the plaintiffs in that case, is a mother of two boys. She had to leave Texas twice in one year to access care after both of her pregnancies were diagnosed with anencephaly—a fatal condition in which parts of the brain and skull do not form.
"Let me be clear, we wanted both of our daughters. We named them, we loved them deeply. But we also understood the reality," Cunningham said.
"This is not freedom," Cunningham said. "This is not what family values look like."
But this bill could pave the way for the prosecution of pregnant patients and the loved ones who help them by reviving a century-old abortion ban.
By amending the 1925 abortion ban, Texas lawmakers could argue that this makes pre-Roe bills once again enforceable. Attorney General Ken Paxton signaled after the fall of Roe that he would follow pre-Roe statutes, until a federal judge blocked prosecutors from pursuing charges against pregnant patients.
"Are we serious right now? This bill could prosecute a marine for helping his pregnant wife get care in Texas, care for babies who had no chance of survival," Cunningham said.
Meanwhile, Taylor Edwards, another plaintiff in the case, paid for everything in her own name when she left Texas to receive medical care out of fear that her loved ones could be criminalized.
"The laws make you feel like you're a criminal navigating a black market," Edwards said.
Pregnant patients who flee the state may no longer be able to turn to family or friends for help out of fear of entangling them in what could be deemed a criminal act, advocates say.
"Our fear comes from the fact that we had people who loved us help us," Kaitlyn Kash, another plaintiff in the case, said. "Now we have to risk them being criminalized."
The bill leaves out a notable group—pregnant patients who face a fatal fetal diagnosis, a condition in pregnancy that means the fetus will pass away before, during or shortly after birth.
For Lauren Miller, who was at risk of organ damage to the kidneys or brain when she went to the emergency room, the exceptions are "as clear as mud."
"How dead do I need to be to get an abortion? I'm still asking that question," Miller said.
For other women, the lack of an exception means they will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term that is non-viable. For Samantha Casiano, her family didn't have the financial means to leave the state, nor did she have the ability to leave her four children behind.
In the days after learning her daughter had been diagnosed with anencephaly, Casiano said she "walked around like I was a walking casket."
She was forced to give birth to her daughter, Casiano said, who was in agony for hours before dying in her father's arms.
As they continue to heal from these harrowing experiences, this group of women is asking for lawmakers to meet with them and hear their stories, they said at the press conference.
At this time, no lawmaker has agreed to meet with them during a planned day of advocacy on April 22.
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Project 2025: What It Means for Women, Families, and Gender Justice - National Women's Law Center
As a 501(c)(3) organization, NWLC does not endorse or oppose any candidate for elected public office.
Project 2025 is a 900-plus–page handbook assembled by the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, with at least 140 former Trump administration officials involved in its drafting. It offers a step-by-step guide for how to quickly implement an extreme agenda across the federal government from day one of a conservative presidential administration. The Project 2025 agenda offers sweeping policy proposals that would dramatically overhaul how our federal government, including departments, agencies, sub-agencies, and personnel, would function, all geared toward implementing and institutionalizing extremist policy priorities and power. Project 2025 seeks to impose a hierarchal, gendered, patriarchal vision of society. It is particularly focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQI+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated, heterosexual family.
It also seeks to reinforce racial hierarchies through a variety of mechanisms. Attempts to roll back civil rights protections and end the federal government’s efforts to achieve gender justice are embedded throughout the entire plan in five overlapping ways: (1) efforts to limit reproductive rights and penalize unmarried women; (2) attacks on protections against sex discrimination and other efforts to expand gender equity; (3) attacks on LGBTQI+ people; (4) gutting of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and other racial justice measures; and (5) efforts to reduce access to and investments in anti-poverty programs by prioritizing the interests of the wealthy over the needs of low-income families, who are disproportionately led by women.
This report focuses on Project 2025’s extreme right-wing attempt to control our government and threaten our democracy through:
- Attacks on Protections Against Sex Discrimination and Other Forms of Discrimination
- Attacks on Reproductive Rights and Access to Health Care
- Attacks on Education
- Attacks on Workplace Justice
- Doubling Down on Tax Cuts for the Rich at the Expense of Working Families
- Attacks on LGBTQI+ Rights
- Attacks on Income Security, Housing, and Nutrition Assistance Programs
- Attacks on Immigrant Families
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Anti-vaccine advocates battle over narrative in West Texas, downplaying role of measles in deaths
After Daisy Hildebrand died of measles, her death was made public first by Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine skeptic who blamed the hospital for fumbling her care. Daisy’s father told The Texas Tribune he never to spoke to Malone.
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/a5d3cfe047bd4fa895d70a3356924e67/0222%20Robert%20Malone%20REUTERS%20TT%2001.jpg)
Dr. Robert Malone speaks with Epoch Times editor Jan Jekielek at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held at at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland on Feb. 22, 2025. Credit: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via REUTERS Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback. When Daisy Hildebrand became the second Texas child to die of measles on April 3, her physicians reported – per the state health code – the 8-year-old’s death to local officials in Lubbock where she died and in tiny Gaines County where the girl lived.
In deference to the girl’s family, who planned to bury her the following Sunday, officials determined that sharing the news with the public could wait until the following week. “There’s a protocol that is generally followed,” said Zach Holbrooks, the executive director of the South Plains Public Health District, which covers four counties, including Gaines. “We put information out in a measured, careful manner.”
But Holbrooks’ plans were dashed when the day before Daisy’s funeral, communication of her death was leaked by private channels and commandeered by a vocal, growing movement critical of vaccines. Instead of a clinical state or hospital press release, news of Daisy’s death came from the highly-charged writings of vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone, a physician once labeled by The New York Times as a “Covid misinformation star.”
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/bd8ad482f78442ca98da07249d45f471/0226%20Measles%20Covenant%20TrT%2049.jpg)
Texas measles cases rise to 597. Here is what you need to know.
“Breaking news: Another Texas child dies a tragic death after recovering from measles,” Malone wrote in a Saturday evening post on X. The Virginia doctor directed his 1.3 million followers to a 930-word substack essay where he accuses the University Medical Center in Lubbock of mismanaging Daisy’s case and purports that she died not from measles, but from sepsis after having been ill from mononucleosis and tonsillitis. She had already recovered from measles, Malone wrote.
That announcement — and the flurry of media inquiries that came next — perplexed community health leaders who spent the weekend stumbling through a communications plan, in which they reiterated that the child had died of measles pulmonary failure.
More importantly, the revelation circumvented the wishes of the people most important in the case, Daisy’s family. Peter Hildebrand, Daisy’s father, told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday he did not know how his daughter’s death information was made public.
“I have never even heard that name before,” Hildebrand said, referring to Malone. “So he’s the reason I was sitting there [at my daughter’s funeral], having to fight media off of the church?”
It’s the latest skirmish in an ongoing war for control over the narrative around the measles outbreak, how the public should respond to it and the people who have lost children to the disease. Local public health officials, the state health department and leading epidemiologists have been encouraging vaccination to prevent measles' spread, while vaccine skeptics and the nation’s health secretary are downplaying the effects of the illness and platforming unconventional therapies.
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The mixed messaging is an added headache to local health departments — along with the expected cuts in the state’s already meager public health resources — and threatens to push the end of the outbreak even further.
“It’s just so tough to see all of this,” said Dr. Sara Safarzadeh Amiri, chief medical officer for Odessa Regional Medical Center and Scenic Mountain Medical Center. “The misinformation is making it even more confusing [for parents] to make the right decision for their child.”
During the first three months of this year, 60% more measles-mumps-rubella vaccines were administered in the South Plains and Panhandle areas compared to the same time period last year, according to the state’s immunization registry that a minority of Texans opt into.
But, as some have sought more vaccinations, others seek dubious treatment methods. At least one Lubbock hospital has treated some pediatric measles patients for vitamin A toxicity after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., promoted it. The steroid budesonide typically used for asthma and the antibiotic clarithromycin, both of which Kennedy touted for healing “300 measles-stricken Mennonite children” are not evidence-based treatments. And public health officials say they face escalating threats from conspiracy theorists sowing doubt about the MMR vaccine, the only effective way to prevent the virus.
Two shots of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective in preventing the virus. Measles is most actively spreading in pockets of Texas where vaccination rates fall below 95%, the threshold needed to build herd immunity. Gaines County’s kindergarten vaccination rate is about 82%.
The outbreak will continue until everyone who is susceptible has been infected or gets vaccinated, Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said during a press conference last week.
“If people are forgoing the vaccine because they think these treatments will work for them, that’s misguided,” Adalja said. “The fact that they are being mentioned by Kennedy is tactical on his part.”
Recasting the measles deaths
Malone is one of several medical practitioners who amassed a large online following during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he cast doubt on the safety of vaccines on podcast interviews, public demonstrations and on X, formerly Twitter, which at one point barred him for violating the platform’s misinformation policy.
From his Virginia home, the infectious disease researcher has been watching the Texas measles outbreak with intense interest. He said in a phone interview with The Texas Tribune that media outlets choosing to highlight Texas’ outbreak among the many that are occurring worldwide is a “coordinated fear campaign.” And that campaign, he said, also aims to cast blame on Kennedy, who was confirmed as health secretary amid the outbreak.
“There are statements that RFK was somehow responsible for the outbreak,” said Malone, who Kennedy has defended against criticism. “This is political propaganda.”
Malone said he received an anonymous tip about Daisy’s death and then learned more about her case from a doctor who was “close to the family.” Malone declined to name that doctor but said the physician was not involved directly with Daisy’s care at the hospital.
Malone said he transcribed those doctors’ notes and published the transcription to his millions of Substack followers on Saturday, the day before Daisy’s funeral. “That was a hot take,” Malone said. “The wishes of the family were to get this alternative narrative out — the true narrative to counter the false narrative.”
Hildebrand told the Tribune he didn’t want Daisy’s death revealed to the public before the funeral.
On the same day Malone broke the news of Daisy’s death, Kennedy’s staff was quickly scheduling an unannounced trip to Seminole, the county seat of Gaines County, to attend Daisy’s Sunday funeral.
In Gaines County, Kennedy raised doubts about the safety of the vaccine, telling Daisy’s father, “You don’t know what’s in the vaccine anymore,” The Atlantic reported. Hildebrand told the Tribune he appreciated the secretary paying his respects to his family.
It wasn’t until the day after Malone broke the news of Daisy’s death that health officials in Lubbock and the state offered a public statement confirming the child’s death by measles.
“The child was receiving treatment for complications of measles while hospitalized,” the release from University Medical Center stated. “It is important to note that the child was not vaccinated against measles and had no known underlying health conditions.”
By then, the campaign to plant doubt about what Texans were being told by the medical community about the two children’s deaths was already underway.
Anti-vaccine group’s influence
For months, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Kennedy founded but stepped away from after becoming the nation’s health secretary, had been generating news articles and videos about measles, pointing to outbreaks in highly vaccinated communities and amplifying possible side effects of the MMR vaccine, which are generally mild.
Leaders of the organization’s broadcast arm visited Gaines County to interview the parents of six-year-old Kayley Fehr, the first child to have died from measles in a decade. The Mennonite couple told CHD they stand by their decision to not vaccinate Kayley or their four surviving children who recovered from measles. CHD-TV Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker also casts doubt on Kayley's cause of death, insisting that she had a bacterial pneumonia that doctors could have treated differently.
CHD’s video also lauded the work of Ben Edwards, a Lubbock doctor who CHD says has successfully treated many positive measles cases with unconventional therapies, including vitamin A, which can’t prevent measles but can be used as a supplemental treatment. Attempts to reach Edwards for comment were unsuccessful.
By late March, Covenant Children’s Hospital had treated several unvaccinated measles patients who suffered from vitamin A toxicity. Some of those patients had reported using vitamin A to prevent measles, chief medical officer Dr. Lara Johnson said in a statement.
On the day of Daisy’s funeral, Kennedy posted on X a photo of himself with members of the Mennonite community along with Edwards and Odessa doctor Richard Bartlett, writing that both physicians have “treated and healed” Mennonite children using budesonide and clarithromycin. Neither method has been scientifically proven to successfully treat measles.
On Wednesday, Children’s Health Defense uploaded a video with vaccine critic Pierre Kory, whose medical certifications were revoked last year for spreading “false or inaccurate information,” claiming Daisy’s medical records show she died by medical error, not by measles.
“They are scaring people into getting a very dangerous vaccine and scaring people in what is a very benign case,” Kory says.
Kennedy made similar claims in an exclusive CBS interview, saying Daisy died from a bacteriological infection and not measles. He also used the interview to plug his effort to get the CDC to study the risks of vaccines. Kennedy has repeatedly suggested there’s a link between vaccines and autism even though more than two dozen studies found no such connection.
On Monday, CHD published an interview with Daisy’s father who detailed how his daughter had been sick in recent weeks and worsened after a family trip to Mexico. Hildebrand said Daisy was initially diagnosed with strep and mononucleosis but sent home at least three times by three hospitals: first at Exceptional Community Hospital in Lubbock, then at nearby Covenant Children’s Hospital and finally, University Medical Center where she returned and died, Hildebrand told the Tribune.
With prompting by CHD, Hildebrand agreed with the nonprofit group’s assessment that hospital physicians were too focused on her vaccination status and measles diagnosis and less on other causes that they believe led to her death, including a bacterial infection.
“I feel that if they cared the way they should that my daughter would still be here,” Hildebrand told CHD-TV, adding that he does not believe his daughter died of measles.
“The measles don’t kill people,” he said. “These foolish doctors are the ones that kill people.”
The two Lubbock hospitals declined to comment on Daisy’s case, citing patient privacy laws.
How misinformation took hold in West Texas
Since the first measles cases were reported, there’s been little in the way of public statements from elected officials about it and the void has been quickly filled by those who believe vaccines are unsafe, like Children’s Health Defense.
By late February, the number of cases had hit the 124 mark, and a 6-year-old Mennonite girl, later identified as Kayley Fehr, had died. Still, Texas elected officials offered little reaction other than to point the blame at undocumented immigrants crossing Texas’ southern border.
State health officials have not yet confirmed how measles arrived in Texas.
Since the first measles death, state and federal staff and resources have been sent to the region to assist with vaccinations and testing. On most days, attendance at those clinics is minimal, according to local health officials. “I’ve driven by a few times and there’s nobody there,” said Collin McLarty, chief executive officer of Yoakum County Hospital.
Gaines County, where most of the cases have been reported, is also home to a large community of Old Colony Mennonites, a conservative religious group that speaks Plautdietsch, a Low German dialect. They do not formally shun immunization but many do not opt to vaccinate. For decades, health officials in the region have had to rely on the members or former members of the religious community to help translate medical information for the group, making vaccination outreach even more difficult.
Meanwhile, state funding for immunization and outreach — which is mostly performed by public health departments — has remained stagnant in Texas. According to The Associated Press, Lubbock receives a $254,000 state grant each year for immunization efforts. That number has not increased in 15 years. In 2023, Texas spent only $17 per person on public health, among the lowest in the country, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center. A decade ago, it was $19 per person.
Buoyed by the general public’s weariness with pandemic-era mandates, the state’s most politically active critic of vaccine mandates — Texans for Vaccine Choice — continues to strengthen. More than a dozen bills it supports are before the Texas Legislature, including those that would make it easier for residents to obtain exemptions to required childhood vaccinations to attend schools, as well as measures that would put more requirements on medical professions before a vaccine is administered.
Resident caught in the communication crossfire
Even residents in the outbreak area working to keep neighbors safe find themselves caught in the vaccine-choice crossfire.
On Feb. 25, the Gaines County Public Library posted a notice on its Facebook page asking their patrons to “kindly” remain at home if they had been exposed to measles or were unvaccinated. Within hours, vaccine critics, including Texans For Vaccine Choice President Rebecca Hardy, hurled criticism at the library.
“This is NOT okay” Hardy said on her own Facebook page, reposting the library’s notice. “Public services should be available to the entire public, regardless of their conscientious choices. Correct this immediately.”
Sabra Hall, the library’s director, was shocked at the backlash. She had the notice pulled down within five hours.
“The majority of the comments were from people who didn’t even live here,” Hall said. “It blew my mind.”
Nearby, the director of Andrews County Health Department Gordon Mattimoe, has faced similar backlash in recent weeks when he shared information on Facebook about vaccination clinics.
“You’ll have people from El Paso or faraway places that are just anti-vaxxers post comments to what we post,” Mattimoe said. “I try not to read the comments.”
On three separate occasions, Mattimoe said, he and his colleagues received threatening telephone messages from unknown callers who posit conspiracy theories that the MMR vaccine causes autism, a claim that study after study has debunked.
The misinformation feels like deja vu for Mattimoe, who recalled conspiracy theories thrown around online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, Mattimoe would call out inaccurate Facebook posts and offer links to valid information.
But that’s too time consuming for battle-weary Mattimoe, who said he’s just letting things slide to focus on pushing out the truth and treating people who want his help.
“It can be discouraging,” he said. “But we keep our heads up.”
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Hotez: Declining vaccination rates leave Texas vulnerable to measles
March 17, 2025Dr. Peter Hotez at his Baylor office in Houston on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer Declining childhood vaccination rates left parts of Texas vulnerable to a measles outbreak that continues to worsen, and could lead to the reemergence of other infectious diseases, Dr. Peter Hotez told the Houston Chronicle on Monday.
Hotez, the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, outlined the threat posed by measles and the ongoing Texas outbreak during a wide-ranging HC Live event on Monday. He expects the outbreak to continue to grow, at least in the short term, due to an increase in nonmedical vaccine exemptions among Texas schoolchildren over the past decade.
“It's like a hurricane passing over warm Caribbean waters,” Hotez said. “As long as there's warm Caribbean waters– in this case, large populations of unvaccinated kids – this epidemic is going to continue.”
The outbreak had been linked to 259 infections across Texas as of Friday, mostly in children who have not received the vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Thirty-four people have been hospitalized for treatment and one school-aged child has died, the first measles death in the United States since 2015.
One death has also been reported in New Mexico, which reported 35 measles cases as of Friday morning.
The risk of other infectious diseases
Measles is often the first infectious disease that spreads in communities with lower vaccination coverage because it is so contagious, Hotez said. If those rates continue to decline, he worries there could be a recurrence of diseases such as whooping cough or polio.
The U.S. has been considered polio-free since 1979, and cases have fallen by more than 99% across the globe since 1988, according to the World Health Organization. But it has not been entirely eradicated, as polio virus was detected in wastewater in New York in 2022.
“I don't expect anything imminently, but that would be sort of the mother of all worries for me, is to bring back something horrible like polio,” Hotez said. “We need to really push hard on the education of parents and explain why these illnesses are so devastating and why the vaccines have this incredible safety record.”
The threat of measles
The Texas outbreak has been difficult to contain for several reasons, Hotez said.
Measles is “one of the most transmissible viruses we know,” more so than the flu or COVID-19, Hotez said. Up to nine in 10 people who are exposed to the virus will become infected if they aren’t vaccinated, according to the CDC.
“That's why this thing spreads like wildfire, or like a hurricane over warm waters. And the warm waters are the unvaccinated population of West Texas,” he said.
The virus is spread through coughing and sneezing and can linger in the air for up to two hours. That means that someone can be infected even if they don’t come into direct contact with someone who is sick, Hotez said.
Most measles cases are mild and cause symptoms such as fever, cough, runny nose, conjunctivitis and a rash. But the virus can lead to complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can lead to convulsions that could cause deafness or an intellectual disability, according to the CDC.
“Measles is a really bad actor, and not something you want to mess around with,” Hotez said. “It should be treated as a very serious infection.”
A vial of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is on display at the Lubbock Health Department Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. Mary Conlon/Associated Press The outlook in Texas
The outbreak has ballooned since it began spreading about six weeks ago in the South Plains region of Texas. Roughly two-thirds of cases have been in Gaines County, a small county located along the New Mexico border. But there have been some cases in the Panhandle and as far as Lamar County, located northeast of Dallas along the Oklahoma border.
Hotez said he expects the outbreak to continue to spread, at least in the short term, due to the sharp increase in nonmedical vaccine exemptions over the past decade.
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Conversation
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