Meet 18 women who shared heartbreaking pregnancy journeys in post-Roe world

On the Brink: Women detail impact of abortion restrictions on their health care.

By Nadine El-Bawab, Tess Scott, Christina Ng, and Acacia Nunes
December 16, 2023

…In a monthslong investigation, 18 women from across 10 states shared their deeply personal stories, chronicling their heartbreaking journeys and how, in some cases, they were brought to the brink of death because they couldn't access timely care in their home states.

The women appeared in a companion broadcast, "Impact by Nightline: On the Brink," with exclusive interviews by Diane Sawyer and Rachel Scott, which looks at the hidden health care crisis playing out in clinics and exam rooms across the country. So many families posing the question: is this what lawmakers intended? "On the Brink" premieres Dec. 14 on Hulu.

These are their stories.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/meet-18-women-shared-heartbreaking-pregnancy-journeys-post/story?id=105563366

Part 1 – Fighting for their lives: Women and the impact of abortion restrictions in post-Roe America

Women had to wait until they were sick enough to get care in their home states.

By Nadine El-Bawab, Tess Scott, Christina Ng, and Acacia Nunes
December 14, 2023

Anya Cook had reason to celebrate. After 17 miscarriages, she was pregnant again, in her second trimester, and she and her husband, Derick, were ready to share the good news with family and friends.

After the joyous announcement in December 2022, Anya and Derick attended the Coral Springs holiday parade in their Florida neighborhood, then went to dinner at a local restaurant. It was a good end to a good day.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/fighting-lives-women-impact-abortion-restrictions-post-roe/story?id=105563174

How the Dobbs decision changed life in places where abortion access was taken away

NPR
June 24, 2023
LISTEN • 10:29

SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Even as many people push to further restrict abortion access, the laws already on the books began to affect people's lives immediately once Dobbs went into effect, people like Elizabeth Weller (ph).
ELIZABETH WELLER: There was nothing wrong with her, no development issues wrong.

DETROW: When Weller found out her baby was a girl during an ultrasound, she was overjoyed. She and her husband were preparing a nursery. She wasn't thinking about terminating the pregnancy or the strict laws prohibiting abortion in her home state of Texas. But about a week after the scan, she went for a walk and realized that something wasn't right.

Continued: https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/2023-06-24/how-the-dobbs-decision-changed-life-in-places-where-abortion-access-was-taken-away

24.06.2023

SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN

Dallas mom tells first lady of ‘demeaning’ ordeal with doomed fetus, Texas abortion ban

As the post-Roe vs. Wade era nears one-year mark, White House is prodding Congress to restore abortion rights.

By Todd J. Gillman
Jun 20, 2023

WASHINGTON — Two Texas women whose doctors refused to perform legal and medically urgent abortions met Tuesday with first lady Jill Biden, recounting their ordeals as the White House pressures Congress to codify rights the Supreme Court erased nearly a year ago.

“Even prayed-for, planned pregnancies can end in abortion,” said one of the women, Austin Dennard, a Dallas physician with two kids and a third due in August. “The state of Texas should not be making these decisions for me or for anybody else.”

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2023/06/20/demeaning-first-lady-hears-dallas-moms-ordeal-with-doomed-fetus-and-texas-abortion-ban/

20.06.2023

Tragedies mount for women with ill-fated pregnancies under Texas’ abortion bans

Bridget Grumet, Austin American-Statesman
May 24, 2023

Life took a wrenching twist for Jessica Bernardo last fall. She went from being an elated, expectant mother — listening to audiobooks about pregnancy, teasing her husband about installing child safety gates on the stairs of their Frisco home — to using a private browser on her computer to search for an abortion.

Bernardo desperately wanted the child she named Emma. About 15 weeks into the pregnancy, though, doctors said the child had severe medical conditions and would not survive to birth.

Continued: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/columns/2023/05/24/grumet-texas-abortion-bans-inflict-growing-toll-expectant-mothers/70248396007/

USA – You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative

May 22, 2023
By Michelle Goldberg

It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there has been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies.

Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing. Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement for spooking doctors into not intervening when pregnancies go horribly wrong. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html

Texas Forced This Woman to Give Birth to a Stillborn Son. She’s Suing

Tessa Stuart
Mon, May 22, 2023

After multiple miscarriages, Kiersten Hogan thought she would never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She’d nearly given up hope when in June 2021 she learned she was pregnant. But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was the longest 5 minutes of my life,” Hogan recalled on Monday.

Her water had broken. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she had lost too much amniotic fluid for her son to survive — but hospital staff didn’t tell her that. “They didn’t tell me much about my son’s chances of survival. But the one thing they did make clear repeatedly was that I should not leave,” a tearful Hogan said Monday. “I was told that if I tried to discharge myself, or seek care elsewhere, that I could be arrested for trying to kill my child. So of course, I stayed.”

Continued https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-forced-woman-birth-stillborn-182841209.html

8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger

The original lawsuit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March.

By Nadine El-Bawab
May 22, 2023

The Center for Reproductive Rights is expected to add eight more women to a lawsuit it filed against Texas over its abortion ban, claiming their lives were put at risk due to the law. This brings the total number of plaintiffs to 15.

The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/8-women-join-suit-texas-abortion-bans-claim/story?id=99480988

USA – “We backslid”: Doctors talk about how abortion care changed in 2022

"We backslid": Doctors talk about how abortion care changed in 2022
The Dobbs decision was devastating — but not all the news was bad

By MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 26, 2022

It came as a shock, in spite of everything. Halfway through the year, we knew it was coming. We knew from the years and years of laws systematically chipping away at abortion access. We knew from the closed clinics. We knew, weeks before, when the Supreme Court's draft opinion was leaked in May. And yet, as I sat in the Salon studios on a Friday in June and a female colleague looked over and said, "They overturned Roe," I felt the immediate sense of free fall terror. The impact was immediate and chilling.

In states with trigger laws, the sense of urgency among patients and providers kicked in right away. Rachel Lachenauer, the Director of Patient Experience at the National Abortion Federation, told Salon last June following the decision, "We're getting absolutely inundated today with callers who are saying 'I just got a call from my facility, or I just called them to check in and I've learned that I'm no longer able to access care in my state."

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/12/26/we-backslid-doctors-talk-about-how-abortion-care-changed-in-2022/

When Can Dying Patients Get a Lifesaving Abortion? These Hospital Panels Will Now Decide.

Abortion bans force ethics committees to determine when a pregnancy is lethal enough to justify termination.

BY MARK JOSEPH STERN
JULY 29, 2022

When Elizabeth Weller’s water broke during the 18th week of her pregnancy, the prognosis was bleak: With almost no amniotic fluid left, the fetus could not survive. If Weller did not terminate immediately, she would be at risk of a potentially lethal uterine infection. She requested an abortion, but the hospital’s ethics committee refused. The committee feared that if doctors terminated Weller’s pregnancy before she was actively dying, they would face liability under Texas’ six-week abortion ban. So the committee forced her to wait until she had a high fever and “foul” discharge—symptoms of a serious infection in her uterus—to terminate.

Weller’s story, documented by Carrie Feibel in a wrenching NPR report, reflects a growing crisis in a post–Roe v. Wade America. Many states have banned or severely restricted abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe on June 24, enacting laws with extremely vague and narrow exceptions for the life of the mother. Health care providers have legitimate concerns that they will face civil and criminal liability if they terminate a pregnancy under any circumstances. They worry that judges, juries, and prosecutors will disagree that the patient had a true medical emergency. And so the decision shifts from the patient to the hospital, which frequently places these delicate considerations in the hands of ethics committees.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/abortion-ban-hospital-ethics-committee-mother-life-death.html