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Ivan Flores on Muck Rack

Ivan Flores

Austin
As seen in: The Texas Observer, Heated, Medium, Al Jazeera English, Ars Technica, Foreign Policy Magazine, The National, The Nation, The Street, The Diplomat Magazine, Arizona Daily Star and
creative director @texasobserver occasional baker, cloud aficionado and slow runner

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Articles

A Birth Plan for the Dying

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By Ivan Flores
| Texas State Public Affairs Network
We have a plan for the day you are born and the day you die. We can make you breathe—or at least try to—when your lungs fail and your blood can no longer clot. At the Texas Medical Center (TMC) in central Houston, we repair spinal defects before birth and replace hearts after a mother’s cardiovascular system collapses. I have watched doctors bring women back from the dead. It is an astonishing and beautiful thing. But when your baby is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly, we cannot help you.
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A Jailhouse Snitch and the System that Made Him

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By Ivan Flores
| Texas State Public Affairs Network
Business Crime Entertainment Politics Technology Texas July 16, 2026 / Ivan Armando Flores Paul Skalnik was a con artist, passing bad checks, role-playing as a successful businessman, and racking up a series of sometimes overlapping marriages. Over the years, he bilked numerous people out of their savings with hollow promises and half-cocked schemes, which often ended with him fleeing town. That in itself would make him a compelling character for a book.
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A Birth Plan for the Dying

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By Ivan Flores
| Inkl
But when your baby is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly, we cannot help you. Not because we lack the training or the skill. Because the law forbids it. If you learn about fetal anomalies only online, it might distort your sense of scale. Around 3 percent of pregnancies are complicated by a life-limiting anomaly. At the TMC, that means roughly 800 families a year—or about two a day—learn that their child will not survive birth or will die minutes after.
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