Three women with stories of how abortion laws in their states detrimentally affected their health after having complications with their pregnancies are scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Monday evening.
The women intend to use their time on the DNC stage to highlight how the end of Roe v. Wade (which was overturned after former President Donald Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court) has negatively impacted pregnant people across the country, not just in their ability to have autonomy over their own bodies, but also in denying them the ability to seek out medical care that may be essential to protect their health and their lives.
Kaitlyn Joshua is one of the three women who will speak. After experiencing bleeding and severe pain from a miscarriage around the 10th or 11th week of her pregnancy in 2022, Joshua was turned away from two hospitals in Louisiana that wouldn’t perform a procedure to remove the fetus, even though it had stopped growing at around seven or eight weeks of gestation.
Louisiana bans abortions at all stages of pregnancy. Since the fetus still had a weak heartbeat, Joshua said, her doctors didn’t want to perform a procedure to help her.
Joshua has said that early in her pregnancy she was also told that she couldn’t have her first doctor’s visit until much later, at around 12 weeks, due to state laws restricting physician involvement in prenatal health. In an interview with NPR, Joshua recalled being told by her physician’s office that many miscarriages happen in the early weeks, and doctors didn’t want to be found liable or investigated for treating them — even though such an action can result in harm to both a pregnant person and the fetus in those early stages.
Joshua has appeared in campaign advertising against the Republican nominee for president, describing her experience as “a direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade.“
Hadley Duvall is another woman who plans to speak at the DNC on Monday. A repeated victim of rape from her stepfather when she was younger, Duvall has discussed in the past how she became pregnant at age 12. She miscarried, but has described “the idea of politicians forcing me to give birth to my rapist’s baby” as being “unconscionable,” adding that Trump and his vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, who has called for a nationwide ban on abortion, do not care “about girls in this situation.”
Amanda Zurawski is also set to speak on Monday about her pregnancy. At 18 weeks, Zurawski went into premature labor and was told her fetus was no longer viable — however, she could not have an abortion due to Texas’s extreme abortion laws, even though she was at a high risk of infection, and was subsequently sent home by her doctors.
Zurawski ended up developing sepsis, nearly dying twice during the ordeal. Due to what she was forced to go through, she is now less likely to be able to have children in the future. She detailed her experience in a heartbreaking ad for President Joe Biden, back when he was still the presumed Democratic nominee for president. She was also a guest of the president’s during his State of the Union address earlier this year.
Zurawski, alongside 19 other women, sued the state of Texas to create a more definitive idea of when abortions could be allowed. State law says that abortions can only happen when a pregnant person’s life is at risk, but in practice, states with such standards oftentimes restrict abortion services at that point, too, much like what happened to Zurawski.
The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Zurawski and her co-plaintiffs, seeing no need to have the law fixed in such a way.
More than two years out from the dismantling of Roe, abortion and other reproductive rights are set to be a major issue in the presidential election.
A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that it is the fifth most important issue in this year’s elections, behind inflation, jobs and the economy, immigration and health care. Still, with 7 percent of respondents overall calling it their most important issue, and with the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump being as close as it is, how people vote based on abortion could tip the scales in that race. The issue is also tied for second as the most important issue among women, according to the poll, and third most important for young voters, two key constituents that Democrats are trying to court in this fall’s races.
Several states also plan to have an abortion rights initiative measure on their November ballots. At least eight states in the U.S. will ask voters to decide about protecting or expanding abortion rights, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota.
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