Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) shared her painful story of multiple miscarriages and a stillbirth during a House Judiciary Committee hearing about abortion access yesterday, raising the question of whether states will use the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade to criminalize stillbirths or medical care used to treat them.
“After which failed pregnancy should I have been imprisoned?” McBath asked. “Would it have been after the first miscarriage, after doctors used what would be an illegal drug to abort the lost fetus?”
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She talked about how she had to carry a dead fetus for weeks while people congratulated her on her pregnancy before labor could be induced.
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“When my doctor finally induced me, I faced the pain of labor without hope for a living child,” she said. “This is my story. It’s uniquely my story. And yet it’s not so unique.”
“And so I ask, on behalf of these women: after which failed pregnancy should I have been imprisoned?” McBath asked. “Would it have been after the first miscarriage? After doctors used what would be an illegal drug to abort the lost fetus?”
“Would you have put me in jail after the second miscarriage? Perhaps that would have been the time, forced to reflect in confinement at the guilt I felt, the guilt that so many women feel after losing their pregnancies?”
“Or, would you have put me behind bars after my stillbirth?” she continued. “After I was forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks, after asking God if I was ever gonna be able to raise a child.”
“And I ask because the same medicine used to treat my failed pregnancies is the same medicine states like Texas would make illegal.”
“I ask, because if Alabama makes abortion murder, does it make miscarriage manslaughter?”
"We have a choice. We can be the nation that rolls back the clocks, that rolls back the rights of women, and that strips them of their very liberty. Or we can by the nation of choice … freedom is our right to choose" — Rep. McBath pic.twitter.com/THNuzaGniJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022
