HOUSTON, Texas – With just days to go before the election, both parties are stepping up efforts to influence voters on priority issues.

In Texas, state abortion restrictions and women's reproductive rights are hot topics this election cycle.

A group of Texas Democratic lawmakers, doctors and advocates for women's reproductive rights held a press conference in response to a recently published article detailing the circumstances that led to the deaths of two pregnant women who died after doctors reportedly denied emergency care due to Texas delaying Senate Bill 8.

“We are here to talk about what is happening to reproductive health care in Texas, why it is happening and what we can do about it,” U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Houston) said in a news conference Thursday.

28-year-old Josseli Barnica was 17 weeks pregnant with her second child when she was in the middle of a miscarriage in 2021.

According to a report by ProPublica, Barnica lay in a Houston hospital bed for 40 hours, with an enlarged uterus and exposed to bacteria, before giving birth to her late son.

Barnica's husband said her medical team told her they could not act until a fetal heartbeat was no longer detected. She died three days later of sepsis.

“It certainly looks like this death was preventable, but our state law didn't allow that,” Dr. Todd Ivey, a Houston-based gynecologist and women's health advocate.

It happened on September 3, 2021, just two days after Texas passed SB 8, the so-called “Fetal Heartbeat Bill.” It prohibits abortion after six weeks unless certain medical exceptions apply.

“Today our poorly written, vague laws are even more restrictive, threatening life imprisonment and loss of license. The result: women die unnecessarily,” Ivey said.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case that decided whether emergency abortions fall under federal protections for critical health care.

In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, in part: “This is a major victory in SCOTUS, protecting Texas health care providers from being forced to violate state law… No Texas doctor should be forced to follow their conscience or the law.” “We successfully sued and stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s backdoor attempt to override state abortion laws.”

The issue of abortion rights has been a major campaign issue among Democrats across the country, including in the highly anticipated Texas Senate race. Thursday's press conference reinforced that message.

“This is health care being exploited for political purposes,” Dr. Damla Karsan, a Houston gynecologist and one of the two plaintiffs in Zurawski v. State of Texas. “It’s shameful that this is happening to women in a country that has the resources and technology we have.”

The timing of this event is not surprising, as Democrats have made abortion restrictions a major campaign issue.

The group supports the Democratic primary on Nov. 5.

According to ProPublica, the goal of the reporting is to fill knowledge gaps about the consequences of abortion bans.