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Some hospitals are still denying miscarriage care despite a state law that’s supposed to prevent that. What an Austin-area woman having a miscarriage went through when she tried to get care.
Austin voters will decide this fall if they want an outside auditor to check the city’s books. But some city officials say that could be problematic.
What you need to know about those pesky fire ants in Central Texas.
We’re in the final stages of group competition as the knockout phase of this year’s World Cup starts this weekend. More from one of the hosts of KUT’s “Vamos Verde” podcast.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jennifer Stayton [00:00:08] Some hospitals are still denying miscarriage care despite a state law that’s supposed to prevent that what an Austin area woman went through when she tried to get care. Also Austin voters will decide this fall if they want more structure around audits of the city’s books but some city officials say that could be problematic. That and much more coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:31] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jennifer Stayton.
Jennifer Stayton [00:00:37] What you need to know about those pesky fire ants in central Texas. And we are in the final stages of group competition as the knockout phase of this year’s world cup starts this weekend. We’ll hear from one of the hosts of KUT’s Vamos Ferre podcast. That is all coming up next on Austin Signal. Stay with us. Hello and welcome. You’re listening to Austin Signal. I’m your host, Jennifer Stayton. It’s Thursday, June 25th. Thanks for joining us today. After Roe V. Wade was overturned in 2022, some doctors warned banning abortion would lead to maternal deaths. In Texas, a ProPublica report found at least four women died after care for their miscarriages was delayed. Last year, the state legislature passed a new law called the Life of the Mother Act, which was supposed to clarify when health care providers can act in these instances. But despite that law, some hospitals still deny miscarriage care. The Texas Tribune’s Eleanor Klybanoff looked into this after one woman’s traumatic weekend seeking treatment. Eleanor is joining us now. Thanks so much for being here on Austin Signal. Thanks for having me. All right, so your story is about Lynn Callaway, a pregnant woman in the Round Rock area who went to an emergency room with severe symptoms of a miscarriage. So first of all, just tell us a little bit about her and what led to that traumatic weekend for her.
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:02:17] Sure. So Lynn Calloway is a woman, she’s married to her high school sweetheart. She’s lived in the Austin area for about seven years. She has an eight-year-old son. She and her husband wanted to expand their family, got pregnant, were so excited. And before she could even get in to see her OB-GYN for that first appointment, she began experiencing pain and spotting. And so she went…
Jennifer Stayton [00:02:39] To one emergency room on a Saturday earlier this year. She went to Baylor Scott and White and Round Rock. What happened when she went there?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:02:48] So when she got to the hospital, you know, she had already seen from blood work with her OB-GYN that her pregnancy hormone, as we call it, was declining when they looked at an ultrasound. There was no evidence of fetal cardiac activity. All the signs were there according to this complaint that she was having a miscarriage. She wanted medication or surgery to what they call empty the uterus, which is sort of standard practice to make sure that you don’t get infection or hemorrhage or worse conditions. And she was told that she should just go home, basically manage this at home with Tylenol, and it would just be like a bad period.
Jennifer Stayton [00:03:23] All right, so throughout this, Lynn and her husband Mario were having to have some pretty tough conversations with each other as she was being denied care and they were trying to navigate this. What was going on for them and their family while this was happening?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:03:38] I mean, when I spoke with Lynn, it was still, I mean this is months later, you can still sort of hear the trauma in her voice when she talks about what this was like. I mean she really thought that she was going to die. We’ve heard stories of women dying from delayed miscarriage care. She was in so much pain. She was, you know, had a fever, chills, shaking. She was bleeding a lot. And she and her husband, she started talking about, you know what would we do if I died? Where would you raise our son? How do you get the life insurance policy? Which he was just… You know, sort of flabbergasted that this is where this conversation was taking them, that they were so unable to get care that this was the conversation they were having.
Jennifer Stayton [00:04:14] So as you said, Baylor Scott and White and Round Rock sent Lynn home, though she was continuing to have symptoms. So what did she do next?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:04:22] So she then, after this really terrible night, went to St. David’s in Round Rock, basically thinking, well, surely it’s this bad now, surely they’ll treat me. And when she was there, she was diagnosed with an infection, as well as a miscarriage, was given antibiotics, slightly stronger pain medication, and sent home again, despite her asking for more intensive care.
Jennifer Stayton [00:04:45] So why would neither of these hospital emergency rooms give her the treatment for what she was clearly by all descriptions displaying?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:04:55] So both of the hospitals sort of declined to comment on Ms. Callaway’s case specifically, citing patient privacy and said that they work with doctors, assess patients individually and adhere with all the laws. The state law is very clear after the abortion ban and then the clarifying law went into effect that doctors can treat miscarriages and they don’t need to sort of extend that for fear of the abortion law. The tricky part is the- The penalties are so high, doctors can face up to life in prison if they perform a prohibited abortion that what we’re continuing to see and hear is a lot of fear of let’s just be really sure, let’s be double certain, or maybe even in some cases, let us wait and see if another doctor will make the same call.
Jennifer Stayton [00:05:40] So despite the new law that’s meant to be sort of a backstop, this seems to still be happening.
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:05:46] At least in this one case, according to this complaint that we read that was filed, it seems like, and certainly in my email inbox, I’ve gotten a lot of emails since this story published of people experiencing similar circumstances. So for Lynn, how did she finally get care? So she finally, on Monday, went in to go see her OBGYN, who said, I really don’t like the way you look, like this isn’t good, gave her the abortion-inducing medication that she’d been seeking all weekend. And, you know, checked her out. But I think, according to the complaint, she had asked her doctor, you now, why did it take so long to get this? And her doctor said, you no, these, because of the law, the doctors just have to be damn sure it’s a miscarriage before they act.
Jennifer Stayton [00:06:30] All right. So you mentioned Lynn has filed a complaint. In her complaint, she cited the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. Now that’s a federal law. What is that? And how does that sort of intersect with with all of this?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:06:46] Right, so that statute, sometimes called EMTALA, basically, it sounds pretty simple. It just says, if you show up to an emergency room, they have to stabilize you before they can send you onward. It’s basically an anti-patient dumping law. The part that comes into play now is, it also says, you know, you have to stabilize particularly people who are in active labor or who are pregnant and experiencing sort of negative consequences because of that. It’s been… A very litigious issue because the Biden administration, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, basically said, you know, that might include performing an abortion. So red states that banned abortion, you still have to comply with EMTALA, that may require an abortion, Texas sued over that. A court said basically that the Biden Administration went too far with that. The Trump administration repealed that policy. It’s all been back and forth and up and down, which I think leaves doctors and hospitals a little bit confused as well with what’s the, what’s
Jennifer Stayton [00:07:42] I was just going to ask you what’s the rule and where do things stand, but it sounds like there’s still confusion around all of this.
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:07:48] EMTALA, and this is Texas’s argument and the Trump administration’s argument, is EMTalA has always been clear. If you need to do whatever you need do to stabilize someone or save their life, do it. The abortion ban allows that as well. But it has just added this other layer of complication to say doctors are confused, hospitals are confused. Hospital lawyers are confused and you see these middle of the night ER doctors maybe making calls that are not, you know, don’t make as much sense in the of day.
Jennifer Stayton [00:08:17] Well, and back to Lynn’s case just as we get ready to wrap up, where else did she file complaints?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:08:23] So she also filed complaints against the doctors and nurse that treated her with the Texas Medical Board and the Texas Board of Nursing. Those complaints are sealed until a decision is made, but we did see recently some doctors be sanctioned for their role in those cases where women died due to delayed miscarriage care.
Jennifer Stayton [00:08:42] And how might that impact maybe other similar cases to lens?
Eleanor Kilbanoff [00:08:47] I think, you know, talking to her lawyer and talking to Lynn, these are slow, onerous, bureaucratic processes, but the goal is to send the message that, yes, you’re fearful of the law and that’s maybe restricting you from acting in like your full medical judgment. There’s consequences on the other side too. If you don’t act when you should, you can also face potential sanctions or discipline.
Jennifer Stayton [00:09:10] We’ve been speaking with the Texas Tribune’s Eleanor Klybanoff. We will have a link to her reporting in today’s podcast, Show Notes. Eleanor, thank you so much again. Absolutely. It’s no secret that the City of Austin’s spending has been under scrutiny. After Prop Q was voted down last year and spending on a new City of Boston logo raised some questions, the city initiated an auditing program that would regularly assess its but one political action committee is pushing for more. To explain all of this, here’s KUT City Hall reporter Luz Moreno-Luzano. Luz, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Jen. All right, Luz. So first of all, where did this initial idea for a city-wide audit come from?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:09:52] Yeah, I think after voters made it pretty clear last November that they were just unhappy with the way the city was spending taxpayer dollars, the city made it kind of a goal to audit itself, make sure that there are not any redundancies or spending that shouldn’t be happening. And then Save Austin Now kind of came in not long after that same vote took place that last fall.
Jennifer Stayton [00:10:22] And you’re talking about the Prop Q vote, remind us quickly what was in that vote.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:10:25] Yeah, that was the the tax rate hike that would have generated, I think it was like more than 100 million dollars. It was meant to like fill some funding gaps. It was going to things like homelessness, public safety, parks, you know, there was just all these things the city wanted to get done.
Jennifer Stayton [00:10:40] So now, how does Save Austin Now fit into all of this? Why do they think the city’s audit plan is not enough?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:10:46] Yeah, so the city’s audit, it’s an external audit for sure. But Matt McCovey, who’s the co-chair of the group, said that the city ordinance, it can more easily be changed, right? So the city council can go in and change an ordinance pretty easily. But a city charter requires another charter election. And so it’s a little harder to, if the city decides that they don’t want to do an audit anymore, essentially, it would be harder to change that role. So what to save us to now?
Jennifer Stayton [00:11:16] Want then in the city’s audit.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:11:19] Yeah, yeah, they want first they want it to be completely an external audit. They don’t want, you know, the city deciding and having a say in the audit in general. But they did talk about diving a little deeper into some of the things that could be audited. You know, they wanted to look at like performance reviews, like, how are some of these contracts that the city approves doing? And are they worth the money? They wanted to look at, like Austin Water and Austin Energy and what their spending looks like, especially as like rates go up for customers.
Jennifer Stayton [00:11:49] All right, well now the city of Austin is going to do an audit. What do they have to say about what Save Austin now is calling for?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:11:56] Yeah, you know, I think Mayor Watson and I chatted and he basically was concerned that having this particular thing in a charter would be a little problematic. You know, if there are flaws with an audit or with the system that they’re working with, it can more easily be adapted with an ordinance. Yeah, and I think he felt that the ordinance that the city already passed has a lot of these same goals that the Save Austin Now petition is trying to accomplish. But having that power to edit it and have a council be able to change it, if necessary, seems to be where the city stands here.
Jennifer Stayton [00:12:36] Right, so the signatures have been gathered, submitted, vetted, what happens next?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:12:41] Yeah, so the petition will end up on the ballot in November. I don’t think it has like a prop Q or prop W letter assigned to it yet, but the city council does have to call for the election, which they have until August to do so.
Jennifer Stayton [00:12:56] And are they likely to do that?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:12:58] I think so, yeah. There will be other things on the ballot in November. Yeah, there are a few other things on the ballots. So yeah, I think that it won’t be a surprise if they call for it. There’s some other potential city decisions before voters in November, potentially a bond, which could be exciting.
Jennifer Stayton [00:13:17] And we know you’re following that one too. We’ve been speaking with KUT City Hall reporter Luz Moreno. Luzano Luz, thanks so much for your time. Thanks Jen. And still ahead, what you need to know about those pesky fire ants in central Texas and soccer fans. We are in the final stages of group competition as the knockout phase of this year’s World Cup starts this weekend. Stay tuned. We’re going to hear from one of the hosts of KUT’s Vamos Ferre Day podcast. Stay with us. This is Austin Signal. We’ll be right back. This is the Austin Signal, welcome back. The new world screw worm is back in Texas. Agricultural leaders warn these parasitic flies could harm pets and ravage the state’s cattle industry. But Texas has been through this before, not just with screw worms, but with lots of invasive species. KUT’s Katie McAfee has the story of how scientists reined in one pest that many people might not realize once posed a threat. It was the Earth.
Katy McAfee [00:14:29] In the early 1990s, research scientist Rob Plaus was driving a rental van down I-35. He had precious cargo in the backseat. Plastic trays filled with hundreds of thousands of red imported fire ants.
Rob Plaus [00:14:44] Suddenly I put my hand the back of my neck and I realized that all the fire ants had escaped out of the trees and They were all swarming on the inside of the truck
Katy McAfee [00:14:53] Plaus had made this trip many times before, and he had a contingency plan for this sort of thing. If there was a small escape, he’d use a little bit of ethanol to kill any ants that got out. Only, this wasn’t a small, he had to douse the whole van.
Rob Plaus [00:15:07] The problem was that after five minutes of spraying with alcohol, I had consumed more alcohol than the ants had. So I had to sleep at the side of the road until I felt good enough to be able to drive back.
Katy McAfee [00:15:20] He took it easy for a few hours, and then cleaned the van out as best he could. But fire ants are extremely hard to get rid of. So when it was time to return the van to the rental place…
Rob Plaus [00:15:30] The guy came out to have a look and check the mileage and everything, and there was still ants just pouring out of the air vents and things.
Katy McAfee [00:15:39] Did you get in trouble with the rental company?
Rob Plaus [00:15:42] Know that I just, you know, it’s like, I don’t know much about this.
Katy McAfee [00:15:46] Plows may have caused a fire ant infestation, but he was actually trying to prevent them. He was one of the few scientists at UT Austin’s Breckenridge Field Laboratory working to eradicate them in the 80s and 90s. Because fire ants might seem as Texan as two-step, but they’re actually invasive. They first arrived on a ship from South America to Mobile, Alabama in the 1930s. Back then, sailors used dirt to keep ships balanced when they were traveling without cargo. When they unloaded the dirt, they unknowingly deposited hundreds, maybe thousands, of what would later be named the red imported fire ant onto and into American soil. From there, they began a relentless migration across the American South. Within a few decades, they made it to Texas, much to the chagrin of ranchers, homeowners, and anyone walking barefoot.
PSA [00:16:35] A tiny ant called the fire ant because of its sickening sting has become a big problem for Texans, and it may be unstoppable.
Larry Gilbert [00:16:43] At that point, in the 1980s, fire ants were a big thing in the news. People were running for Texas Ad Commissioner on the platform of Let’s Eradicate Fire Ants.
Katy McAfee [00:16:53] That’s Larry Gilbert, a professor of integrative biology at UT. He says in South America, fire ants evolved alongside natural predators to keep them in check. But they had no natural enemies in the U.S., so they spread across Texas like syrup on a plate, killing baby cattle, spoiling crops, and shorting out electrical equipment.
Larry Gilbert [00:17:12] Not to mention the fact that a certain fraction of the population are just deathly allergic to fire ants.
Katy McAfee [00:17:19] A very small fraction, less than one-tenth of a percent, according to the National Library of Medicine. But the threat was enough for Texas leaders to wage war against fire ants. They set up quarantine sites. They encouraged residents to douse fire ant mounds with insecticides and report sightings to their county health department. Fire ants became a huge economic problem, too. Texas spent more than a billion dollars a year fighting them, according to one estimate. None of it was working. Gilbert says it felt like you could walk across Texas on fire ant mounds. A genetic mutation that researchers believe occurred after red imported fire ants came to the U.S. Made them particularly hard to eradicate.
Larry Gilbert [00:17:57] We had a form of the fire ant, which is a multiple queen form, where you can have as many as 100 queens or more in a colony. And then so now the workers, instead of executing the extra queens like the British used to do, they tolerate them.
Katy McAfee [00:18:12] These queens are constantly reproducing, laying over 1,000 eggs a day in some cases. The population spread too fast to be tamed with chemicals. Even if the pesticides worked, Gilbert says it wouldn’t have been a long-term solution. They caused too much harm to the rest of the ecosystem. Some of them were banned in the late 80s for being chrysanogenic. Gilbert wanted to find a sustainable solution, one that worked with the ecosystem instead of against it.
Larry Gilbert [00:18:37] And so the next step was, let’s go to South America and see why these things aren’t considered a pest there.
Katy McAfee [00:18:43] In the early 90s, Gilbert got on a plane to Brazil with Plaus, the rental van guy, and a few other researchers. In the Brazilian countryside, they noticed something peculiar. Fire ants were still one of the dominant ants in the ecosystem.
Larry Gilbert [00:18:56] But in a field the size of a football field, you might have five or six species of these little flies that attack the fire ants and cause great chaos.
Katy McAfee [00:19:07] The great chaos goes like this. A tiny fly swoops in, injects an egg into a fire ant, paralyzes it, and flies away. The egg hatches and the larva eventually burrows into the ant’s head, the ant head falls off, and it dies. The flies don’t just kill fire ants, they also make it more difficult for them to forage for food. Gilbert says the discovery was one of the first promising biological controls for the fire ant and they had to take advantage of it. His team brought back several species of the flies to Austin. It took decades, but he says…
Larry Gilbert [00:19:39] We’ve naturalized about four species of these flies in Texas, and most places you go, like if you go out here and kick a mound, you’ll get two different species of the flies coming to attack the ants.
Katy McAfee [00:19:52] Gilbert can’t say for sure if his research helped reduce the fire ant population in Texas, but he’s pretty convinced.
Larry Gilbert [00:19:58] We get congratulations from ranchers saying, wow, you know, since the flies got here, I’m seeing more quail or I’m starting to see lizards. I’m startin’ to see this and that.
Katy McAfee [00:20:09] He says fire ants aren’t ravaging the state like they used to, but they’ll never be fully eradicated from Texas. Attention has been turned to newer invasive pests. African grasses, the cactus moth, the New World screw worm. The only thing left to do is watch where you step. I’m Katie McAfee in Austin.
Jennifer Stayton [00:20:34] We are in the final stages of group competition as the knockout phase of this year’s World Cup begins over the weekend. Juan Diego Garcia is one of the hosts of KUT’s Vamos Verde podcast and World Cup today. Juan has been providing updates for public radio listeners all over the country all tournament long, but he’s with us here right now. Hey Juan.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:56] How you doing, Jen?
Jennifer Stayton [00:20:56] Good. So glad you’re here. So while the United States team has their final group match of their tournament, it’s tonight. So what are they playing for? What’s at stake here?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:07] Glory bragging rights no so they locked up the top spot in the group in the first two matches so tonight’s match is a bit more of a victory lap that said i think it’s gonna provide a good platform to maybe experiment with some tactics and give some guys on the roster a few minutes might even see Christian Polisic return from injury and get back into rhythm ahead of the knockouts.
Jennifer Stayton [00:21:28] And who are they playing tonight?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:30] They are playing Tunisia who are already out of the tournament and fired their coach after game one.
Jennifer Stayton [00:21:35] Oh, okay. All right. So if the US loses tonight, they don’t lose their their status in the World Cup overall.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:41] Right, they go through at the top of the group regardless of the result.
Jennifer Stayton [00:21:44] Okay, so while the other host nations are Mexico and Canada, how have they been doing?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:48] Been doing great. Canada are through to the knockout stage of a World Cup for the very first time. They locked up second place in their group yesterday. Mexico has been a very big story. They’ve had the home crowd behind them. They had a little coronation moment last night because they were also through to next round of the knockouts.
Jennifer Stayton [00:22:07] Okay, Juan, can you check that team tonight who were playing again the U.S.?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:22:11] Oh, my bad. It is Turkey. The other tea team. Right. Right, Tunisia.
Jennifer Stayton [00:22:17] So many T-teams, so many P-team, so many teams to keep track of, yes. You have been keeping track of it throughout the tournament, so thank you for that. Now, earlier you told us that you expected the U.S. Team could go the furthest of the three Mexico, Canada, and the U-S. Are you sticking by that?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:22:32] I am, yes. So far from the games that we have seen, they look the best. They look like they are the most dangerous. They seem to be the most battle-tested, the team with the most chemistry. So out of those three hosts, I still think the US makes the deepest run.
Jennifer Stayton [00:22:49] Okay now Juan, some of the stars have really been shining over the past couple weeks in these matches. Which player has stood out to you the most?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:22:56] I’m spoiled for choice, but I’m going to go with a very common answer, and that is Lionel Messi.
Jennifer Stayton [00:23:01] Okay, and just remind us why. We all kind of know, but remind us, why.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:23:06] Yeah, it’s his sixth World Cup. He is now the leading goal scorer all time at the World Cup, and he’s doing this having just turned 39, which is not a spring chicken, if you will, for soccer play in soccer player terms, at least. You know, there are a ton of players that have been really showing out. But to me, he’s still at the top and he proving it every single game.
Jennifer Stayton [00:23:28] All right, now, Juan, I’m going to hold you to another prediction right now. You picked Spain to emerge victorious from this World Cup. All right. Now we’re a little ways in. Has your mind changed about that at all?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:23:40] My conviction on it has shifted maybe. Oh, okay, do tell. I still stand by my choice. The first round of the competition tends to be a little bit fluky. If we recall four years ago, Argentina lost 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in the group stage and then they went on to win the whole thing. So I still think Spain has what it takes to be the champions. I will say if there is anyone that’s gonna push them all the way to the end, it’s France. They look like they have an absolute machine of a team. They are deep. They are talented, but I must still say, Spain takes it all.
Jennifer Stayton [00:24:13] Well, we may have to have you back to talk about that again before things wrap up. We’ve been speaking with Juan Diego-Carcia, co-host of KUT’s Vamos Ferre podcast and World Cup Today, which you can hear daily on KUT. Juan, thank you so much for talking soccer with us.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:24:30] Thanks for having me, Jen.
Jennifer Stayton [00:24:38] That’s it from us today. We’ll have more about the stories we shared with you in the podcast Show Notes. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director. Alexandra Hart is our producer. Kristin Cabrera is our managing producer. And I’m Jennifer Stayton. Thank you for joining us today for Austin Signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
