This Texas Mom of Four Was Forced to Carry a Dying Baby Until Birth

Samantha Casiano didn't think Texas's extreme abortion bans would affect her, but they did. Her baby died, gasping for air, just four hours after she was born.

Halo Hope’s grave

Real women, just like you and I and Samantha Casiano, who never thought they would want or need an abortion, have discovered that abortion bans do affect them too. Samantha Casiano, a 30 year-old Texas mom, shared her story with me and is fighting abortion bans because she doesn’t want other babies like her beloved Halo, and other families - to suffer like hers did.

“I found out that my baby daughter had no chance of being able to live outside my womb at my 20-week ultrasound. I already had four children—three boys and a girl—and I had been shocked to learn that I was pregnant again just three or four months after giving birth to my youngest son, Louie.

I had gone to see the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well and I thought I had a urinary infection. When the doctor gave me the news that I was pregnant, I was like, “There’s no way. Are you sure that my hormone levels aren’t from the last pregnancy?” But the nurse showed me my positive pregnancy test.

Even though my husband Luis and the kids were surprised, they were excited about the new baby and started chattering about what we would name it.

When I went for the 20-week ultrasound, I was hoping to hear that we were having another girl since I did already have three boys. The technician and I were having a great conversation while she scanned my belly, and then suddenly the room went quiet. I could just feel that something was wrong.

The technician suddenly left the room and called in a second technician. And then the second technician looked at my scan and told me, “I’m sorry Mrs. Casiano, you’re having a girl but she has been diagnosed with anencephaly and it means that she’s incompatible with life.”

I remember feeling like I was in a dream, and asking whether they were sure that this wasn’t something that surgery could fix. I started crying and immediately Googled what anencephaly was on my phone—and then I vomited into a trash can in the room. I was so upset.

When I looked it up, I learned that anencephaly is a condition in which a baby developing in the womb is missing parts of its brain and skull. It’s a birth defect that is fatal.

I called my husband Luis right after I found this out. He hadn’t come with me for the scan because this wasn’t our first rodeo, and I thought I would just be finding out our baby’s gender and checking that there’s 10 fingers, 10 toes and we’re good.

Nothing could have prepared me for hearing that our baby had no chance of living. When he picked up the phone I was sobbing so hard that he couldn’t hear me.

“Our daughter was going to die”

I told him that our daughter was going to die and he just couldn’t believe it. “Our baby’s not going to die. What are you talking about?” he replied.

I said that I had to go now and see my OB-GYN and that I would call him back.

My OB-GYN had been alerted to my ultrasound results, and she was going to see me right away in her office upstairs in the same building.

When she saw me, she immediately gave me a hug and said, “I’m sorry, Sam.” She explained that because my daughter had anencephaly, her brain and her skull would never fully develop.

I was crying and I asked her what my options were and she responded that I didn’t have any options. “You’re in the state of Texas,” she said. “There’s an abortion ban. That means that you have to go on with this pregnancy.”

My mind was blown because I thought that maybe there would be an exception for her, because she was a wanted baby. I loved my baby.

My OB-GYN explained that my daughter was going to die. Either she was going to die inside of me, or die right after birth. She told me that she had only had one other patient with a baby suffering from anencephaly before my diagnosis, and (the doctor) was able to “release” that baby. But she wouldn’t be able to do that for my daughter because of the law in Texas now.

That’s how I learned that I would have to continue the pregnancy, because Texas’ Republican lawmakers would not allow my OB-GYN to save my baby from going through the pain and agony of being born into a world she couldn’t survive in.

I had been aware that the Texas legislature had first passed a 6-week abortion ban in September 2021, and then a ban from conception in August 2022 after the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, but I didn’t think it would affect me. I thought that people maybe wanted to use abortion as birth control.

I had been born and raised a Catholic, so the word abortion was never allowed in my house. I didn’t even know what abortion was until I was about 20 years old and already had my first two kids. I’m almost 31 now.

Because of that, I didn’t even want to tell my mother what had happened at first, since she didn’t believe in abortion. However, now, with what has happened to me and to my daughter, she does. She’s been very supportive.

I also want others to know that I used to be like you. I didn’t think the state’s abortion bans would affect me, but they have and it’s important for you to know that you may need an abortion for your safety and the safety of your family.

When I got home from having the ultrasound and seeing my OB-GYN, I called my best friend, crying, to tell her the news, and she suggested that I leave the state for an abortion.

But when I started to research what would be involved, I realized that it would be too expensive to leave Texas and pay for an abortion in another state.

Luis and I only had one vehicle and we both had jobs and weren’t entitled to any time off. Plus, who would take care of my four kids while I was away? So I realized that I would have to continue my pregnancy.

I remember feeling my baby kicking and moving every day for 12 more weeks. I had to wake up each day knowing that she was going to die. It is a really horrible feeling knowing that you can’t do more for your child.

I also wondered every day, how was I going to bury my daughter? I didn’t have the money for a funeral and I wanted to be able to lay her to rest properly once she came.

Despite the diagnosis, my husband Luis still had so much hope that somehow our baby would be okay that we decided to name her, Halo Hope. It was a really horrible feeling every day knowing that as a mother I couldn’t do all I wanted for Halo, which was to release her to go to heaven.

But it was so hard to just go on with everyday life. Even grocery shopping was difficult. People would ask, “What are you having?” and “What are you going to name the baby?”

I also didn’t realize when I was pregnant how much being forced to carry Halo until I gave birth and she died would hurt my kids as well. They would be asked about the baby all the time and would have to tell people that their sister had died.

It hurt me for my children to be upset. But the state of Texas forced them to go through the pain of the pregnancy with me. I couldn’t shield them from it.

After Halo was born

I went into labor at 32 weeks and as soon as Halo came out, I started crying. My body was shaking and shaking. The nurses wrapped her up and gave her to me. I probably held her for 20 to 30 minutes but it was hard for me to bond with her.

At first she looked like a normal baby—her color was normal. But then her eyes started to slowly bleed. And you could see her grasping for air. Her legs and hands were moving. It’s like when you bring a fish out of a pond. Fish don’t belong in the air, and that’s how Halo looked.

The nurse gave her morphine and that upset me, because morphine is for pain. It meant that my child was in pain. I didn’t want my child to suffer that way. My daughter was in agony. She suffocated to death.

Luis held her most of the time until she died. It was too tough for me. I will always thank him for doing that. She died after four hours on March 29, 2023.

We had set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Halo’s funeral, and thanks to an article about our situation published by NPR, strangers made donations. Then a local charity contributed so we were able to pay for it, as well as for Halo’s tombstone. Fortunately, a local funeral home donated by daughter’s embalming.

Halo’s gravesite. The family will celebrate her second birthday in late March. Courtesy Photo: Samantha Casiano

“After I lost Halo, the mother in me decided that I wanted to roar”

I felt that what happened to us should be everybody’s business. The people in power in Texas forced me to give birth with their abortion ban. I wanted everyone to know who Halo was and how she suffered.

I heard about a group of women suing the state of Texas to force the legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, to add more exceptions and clearer exceptions to the state’s total abortion ban.

The Center for Reproductive Rights was representing the women and the case was called Zurawski v. Texas, named after the lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski, who almost died from a sepsis infection after her water broke at 18 weeks and she was denied a health saving abortion.

I decided to join the lawsuit, which ended up representing 20 women.

Samantha Casiano at a Planned Parenthood event

I felt that it was so important that Texans understand that the abortion ban didn’t allow for any medical exceptions, even when a baby like Halo was doomed to die right after birth.

When it came time for me to be on the stand and tell my story during the district court trial, there were so many people in the room that my heart was racing.

Then when my lawyer gave me the letter to read out loud that I had received from my OB-GYN, telling me that my daughter’s anencephaly was incompatible with life, I began to get really emotional.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe and became so traumatized that I vomited right there in the courtroom. All the strength I had trying to keep it together, just gave out.

The lawyers for the state of Texas were crying while I told my story, but once it was their turn to speak, they wiped their tears and attacked me. They just wanted to win the case.

The district judge who heard our case actually ruled in our favor, saying that Texas doctors could now use their own medical judgment to determine when to provide abortion care in emergency situations—and I was so happy.

I went to Halo’s grave and literally told her that she would be one of the last babies to have suffered the way that she did in Texas.

But just hours later, I learned that the state of Texas was urgently appealing our case to the Texas Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court justices ruled against us and refused to clarify which exceptions could be used to qualify a woman to receive a legal abortion in Texas. And they refused to add fatal fetal anomalies like Halo’s as a reason for an abortion.

“I felt stabbed in the back by the state Supreme Court”

I felt betrayed, disgusted, and like I was stabbed in the back. Now, I feel like, when people call this country the “land of the free,” I want to say, “What part is freedom? I didn’t have the right to freedom of my own body.”

I decided to have my fallopian tubes removed. I don’t ever want to have any more children. I don’t want to go through that or have my family go through that again.

Although my husband was supportive, he spiraled in his own way after Halo died and he’s become kind of a different person, so we separated.

We co-parent well, though, but we are not “one” the way we used to be. So I feel like Texas took that from me, too.

I decided that I had to keep speaking out at events and on panels. I want people to know that this situation is going on and even if they think that my situation has nothing to do with them, they have children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

They are living in times where they don’t have reproductive freedom, so they should fight for their loved ones and their community.

I got to meet Kamala Harris at the rally for reproductive freedom that she had in Houston during the presidential campaign, and she told me that the fight would continue regardless of how the election turned out.

When Donald Trump won, I was disgusted. And even more disgusted that family members voted for him, knowing what had happened to me and Halo.

One family member who voted for him later got pregnant and had to leave the state for an abortion. She has since apologized to me and admitted that she was wrong to have voted for Trump.

I just spoke out on a panel at the Abortion in America conference in Austin a couple of weeks ago. It was organized by Lauren Peterson and Kaitlyn Joshua, who co-founded Abortion in America with the late Cecile Richards, who led Planned Parenthood nationally for 12 years.

My oldest son, who is 13, supports me doing this in every way. My other three children are too young to understand what I’m doing.

We all try to visit Halo’s grave every Sunday, and we’ll have a party for her second birthday on March 29 with a cake. We call her birthday her “Freedom Day.”

The day she was born is the day she was finally free to go to heaven. She shouldn’t have been on this earth, but the state of Texas forced her to be here and she fought a fight we all knew she would lose.

I love Halo so much and I will speak for her because she’s not here to speak for herself.”

Editor’s Note: Some parts of this story have been edited by the reporter for brevity.