This isn’t hyperbole. Laws that privilege fetuses over those who carry them haven’t just relegated women to second-class citizenship; they have also led to the denial of lifesaving care in case after case. In affidavits, Ohio health care providers reported having to comfort a sobbing cancer patient who was refused an abortion, and seeing at least three patients who threatened to commit suicide after being denied abortions.
In August, a woman in Texas who was denied an abortion for an unviable pregnancy ended up in the intensive care unit with sepsis. Another Texas woman, pregnant and in failing health, was recently told she shouldn’t come back unless she had a condition as severe as liver failure or stroke. A woman in Wisconsin was left bleeding for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage just days after the Supreme Court’s decision; a doctor in Texas was told not to treat an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured.
And then there are the stories of women forced to endure doomed pregnancies. Nancy Davis, a mother of three in Louisiana, was denied an abortion even though her fetus was missing part of its head. Chelsea Stovall in Arkansas, who was 19 weeks pregnant when she found out that her daughter wouldn’t survive, was also refused treatment. After traveling 400 miles to get an abortion, she told a local reporter, “I should be able to say goodbye to her where I want to.”
Those are just the adults. This summer, Republicans insisted the story of a raped and pregnant 10-year-old in Ohio was a hoax, and later tried to paint the girl’s experience as a tragic anomaly. In fact dozens of girls in Ohio 14 years old and under had abortions in 2021. In neighboring Kentucky, more than a dozen children aged 14 or younger had abortions last year; two 9-year-olds needed abortions in the past few years. These are victimized children who will now be forced to carry pregnancies, perilous for their small bodies, or leave their home state for care.
