AUSTIN, Texas — The room went cold during Samantha Casiano’s 20-week anatomy scan for her fifth pregnancy. The ultrasound tech, previously bubbly and talkative, went silent. Something was wrong, Casiano recounted in a Travis County court Wednesday.
Casiano, 29, thought she’d find out the gender of her baby that day. Instead, she learned her unborn daughter’s brain and skull were not forming properly and she would not survive.
Casiano carried her pregnancy to term because she didn’t qualify for an abortion under Texas’ abortion law and she was scared to travel to a state where abortion is legal. Her daughter, named Halo, died four hours after she was born.
