'After Which Failed Pregnancy Should I Have Been Imprisoned?' Asks Rep. Lucy McBath
The congresswoman highlighted how right-wing attacks on abortion rights could also impact the healthcare available to patients who experience miscarriages and stillbirths.
Congresswoman Lucy McBath on Wednesday shared her own difficult experiences to point out how
attacks on abortion rights by right-wing judges and legislators could impact what treatment doctors can provide to patients who, like her, endure miscarriage and stillbirth.
The Georgia Democrat's comments came during a U.S. House Judiciary Committee
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entitled "Revoking Your Rights: The Ongoing Crisis in Abortion Care Access," an event held as the country
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for the Supreme Court to issue a final ruling expected to reverse
Roe v. Wade.
"For two weeks, I carried a lost pregnancy and the ******* that comes with it," McBath said. "I never went into labor on my own. When my doctor finally induced me, I faced the pain of labor without hope for a living *****."
"
This is my story—it's uniquely my story—and yet it's not so unique," McBath continued, noting how common pregnancy loss is.
"And so I ask, on behalf of these women:
After which failed pregnancy should I have been imprisoned?"
"Would it have been
after the first miscarriage, after doctors used what would be an ******* **** to abort the lost fetus?" she asked. "
Would you have put me in jail after the second miscarriage?"
"
Or would you have put me behind bars after my stillbirth—after I was ****** to carry a dead fetus for weeks, after asking God if I was ever going to be able to raise a *****?" she continued, explaining that
her questions were relevant because "the same medicine used to treat my failed pregnancies is the same medicine states like Texas would make *******."
In the United States, miscarriage is usually defined as pregnancy loss before the 20th week while stillbirth is one that occurs after,
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the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New Hampshire Public Radio
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last week that a "recent experience in Texas illustrates that
medical care for miscarriages and dangerous ectopic pregnancies would also be threatened if restrictions become more widespread."
As the outlet detailed:
One Texas law ****** last year lists several medications as abortion-inducing ***** and largely bars their use for abortion after the seventh week of pregnancy. But two of those *****, misoprostol and mifepristone, are the only ***** recommended in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines for treating a patient after an early pregnancy loss.
The other miscarriage treatment is a procedure described as surgical uterine evacuation to remove the pregnancy tissue—the same approach as for an abortion.
"The challenge is that the treatment for an abortion and the treatment for a miscarriage are exactly the same," said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington in Seattle and an expert in early pregnancy loss.
[...]
