What If You Were Pregnant During the Car Accident?

You were stopped in traffic on I-35 when someone hit you from behind. The bumper damage looked like nothing and the other driver apologized, but then you felt the first cramp. Every question after that one is about your baby.

Here is the direct answer. Texas law allows a wrongful death claim for an unborn child killed by a negligent driver at any stage of the pregnancy, with no viability requirement.

Can You Sue for an Unborn Child Killed in a Car Accident?

Yes. Texas recognizes a wrongful death claim for an unborn child lost because another driver was negligent, no matter how early in the pregnancy.

That right comes from two parts of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code (CPRC). § 71.001 defines “individual” to include “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth,” and defines “death” to include “the failure to be born alive.”

§ 71.003(a) then applies the wrongful death statute when the injured individual “would have been entitled to bring an action for the injury if the individual had lived or had been born alive.” Because the definition already reaches an unborn child at every stage of gestation, that test is satisfied at any gestational age.

The statute does contain exceptions. It doesn’t apply to a claim brought against the mother of the unborn child, against a physician or other licensed health care provider when the death is the intended result of a lawful medical procedure performed with proper consent, against a person who lawfully dispenses or administers a drug, or against a provider whose conduct otherwise relates to lawful medical or health care practice.

Those exceptions do not shield the driver who caused your car accident. They were written for medical conduct and for the mother herself. A negligent third-party motorist is precisely who this kind of wrongful death claim is meant to hold accountable.

Why “Minor” Crashes Can Still Cause Severe Fetal Harm

A collision does not have to total your car to injure a pregnancy. The central danger is placental abruption.

The American Academy of Family Physicians clinical review Trauma in Pregnancy explains that “the placenta is an inelastic organ attached to an elastic organ (the uterus),” and abruption “may occur when trauma involving acceleration and deceleration deforms the uterus and shears the placenta off its implantation site.”

Serious harm may follow crashes no one would call serious. About nine out of ten traumatic injuries during pregnancy are classified as minor, yet 60 to 70% of fetal losses after trauma follow those minor injuries. A separate case-report review of motor vehicle collisions in pregnancy reports the same pattern, up to 70%.

Timing is the other reason to take a mild crash seriously. Placental abruption most often becomes evident within four to nine hours of the trauma, and nearly all reported cases present within 24 hours. A pregnancy can feel normal in the minutes right after impact and still be in trouble that evening.

The Monitoring Standard That Also Builds Your Case

After an accident, see a doctor as soon as possible. The obstetric evaluation you get after a crash protects the pregnancy, and it produces the record your legal claim will later require.

Clinical guidance calls for a minimum of four hours of tocodynamometric monitoring, which tracks uterine contractions, after trauma in a pregnancy past roughly 20 weeks. Monitoring extends to 24 hours when the first four hours bring six or more contractions per hour, or when there is a nonreassuring fetal heart rate, vaginal bleeding, significant uterine tenderness, serious maternal injury, or a positive Kleihauer-Betke test.

That record is more than good medicine. Under § 71.005, a plaintiff bringing this claim “shall provide medical or other evidence that the mother of the individual was pregnant at the time of the individual’s death.”

Three sets of documents carry that weight:

• The fetal monitoring strip from the emergency department or labor and delivery unit
• The obstetric records from the date of the crash forward
• The documentation of the delivery outcome

Request copies of all three as early as you can, and keep going to every follow-up appointment. Your claim rests on these records, and hospitals do not hold them open indefinitely for a patient who stops asking.

Who Can File the Claim, and How Much Time You Have

Texas limits both who may bring a wrongful death action and how long they have to file it. For the loss of an unborn child in a crash, the rules work this way:

• Who may bring the claim. § 71.004 gives the action to the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the deceased, and it is brought for their exclusive benefit. For an unborn child, that means the child’s parents.
• What happens if no family member files. If none of those family members sues within three calendar months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may bring the action instead.
• The filing deadline. Texas allows two years under § 16.003, and the two-year wrongful death clock runs from the date of death rather than the date of the collision. Fetal loss can occur or be confirmed hours to days after impact, so the date of the crash and the date your deadline starts may not be the same day.

Nothing about that two-year window is a reason to wait. Monitoring strips, obstetric charts, vehicle data, and witness memory all get harder to secure as months pass.

Talk to an Attorney About Your Pregnancy Injury Claim

Losing a pregnancy after a crash is not something anyone should have to sort out alone, least of all while still recovering. You do not have to decide today whether to file anything. You do need the medical record preserved while it still exists.

Angel Reyes & Associates has guided injured Texans through situations like this for over 30 years, and our attorneys and investigators can review your obstetric records, the monitoring documentation, and the crash evidence together. 

Contact Angel Reyes & Associates for a free consultation to understand your options before the filing deadline becomes an issue.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.