A note to readers from Jill “J.R.” Labbe, deputy editorial page editor of the Star-Telegram:
I blew it in my Sunday column.
My apologies to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign for not being up-to-date on the permutations of the anecdote she was using about a 35-year-old pregnant woman who died at an Ohio hospital.
The story about the woman being denied medical care because of a lack of cash needed to get past the hospital’s gatekeeper was related to Clinton by a deputy sheriff who passed it along secondhand. I was wrong on how the senator received the information.
An early news report in the New York Post quoted the woman’s grandmother as refuting Clinton’s stump speech about her granddaughter’s insurance status. Additional news reports had officials at the medical center where the woman died of complications from a miscarriage denying that she was refused treatment. She was insured when she came to their facility.
A subsequent Washington Post story, which I did not see before filing the column on Thursday afternoon, reported that the woman’s aunt said the pregnant woman was not insured at the time of an earlier trip to a different medical center, where she was reportedly denied treatment.
I heard from dozens of Clinton supporters Sunday and Monday, and they were understandably upset. I’ve been called everything from a “gender traitor” and “sexist” to things that I’d rather my mama not read. I don’t take those condemnations personally — the writers were angry, and they lashed out in ways that perhaps weren’t appropriate, but they did reflect their frustration.
I have responded to every e-mail I received about this issue by saying I blew it and that a correction and apology would run today. My thanks to those who were gracious and kind in your replies to those e-mails.
