 Last week on the program, we talked about a Texas woman who is now considering leaving the state of Texas due to their draconian anti-abortion laws. Now, she was forced to carry her dead fetus inside of her for two weeks after having a miscarriage because doctors in Texas were too terrified to perform a DNC on her because they didn't want to be accused of doing an abortion on a live fetus. Now, what they put her through was they made her get ultrasound after ultrasound and finally after the third ultrasound, once they had enough evidence to shield themselves from legal culpability, they performed the DNC on her that was required when women have miscarriages. Now, it's not that the doctors would be safe if they were sued in that event. They'd protect themselves from going to jail. Yes. But still, if the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, decided to sue that doctor and claim that they committed an abortion on a live fetus, well, they would have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to defend themselves. So even if that evidence with the ultrasounds, multiple ultrasounds was enough, still, you know, if you're sued with these lawsuits in that state that's going after doctors who do abortions, you still could be destroyed just out of legal fees alone. So the situation is really bad. Now, there's another woman in Texas who had a similar experience where she wanted to have a baby. She had a miscarriage, but she couldn't get the necessary procedure because the doctors were afraid that they would be accused of doing an abortion on her. So as a result, she had to wait until she got incredibly sick to the point where she was sufficiently sick enough to where the doctors would have plausible deniability. In the event they were charged with doing an abortion. So NPR has the story. It was May 10 of 2022. Elizabeth was 18 weeks pregnant. She ate a healthy breakfast, went for a walk outside and came back home. Elizabeth stood up to get some lunch. That's when she felt something shift in her uterus down low. And then this burst of water just falls out of my body. And I screamed because that's when I knew something wrong was happening. Her water had broken, launching her into what she calls a dystopian nightmare of physical, emotional and mental anguish. James rushed home from work. That's her husband and drove Elizabeth to nearby Woodlands Hospital, part of the Houston Methodist Hospital system. An ultrasound confirmed that she had suffered premature rupture of membranes, which affects about 3% of pregnancies. The facts were grim. At 18 weeks, the watery protective cushion of amniotic fluid was gone. There was still a fetal heartbeat, but it could stop at any moment. Among other risks, both the fetus and Elizabeth were now highly vulnerable to a uterine infection called choreoamnionitis. The OBGYN, who said she could not speak to the media, laid out two options according to Elizabeth. One option was to end the pregnancy. That's called a termination for medical reasons. The other option is called expectant management, in which Elizabeth would stay in the hospital and try to stay pregnant until 24 weeks, which is considered the beginning of viability outside the womb. Outcomes from expectant management vary greatly depending on when the waters break. Later in pregnancy, doctors can try to delay delivery to give the fetus more time to develop, while also warding off infection or other maternal complications such as hemorrhage. But when membranes rupture earlier in pregnancy, particularly before 24 weeks, the chance of a fetus surviving plummets. One reason is that amniotic fluid plays a key role in fetal lung development. For a fetus at 18 weeks, the chance of survival in that state is almost non-existent according to Peaceman. This is a doctor. This is probably about as close to zero as you'll ever get in medicine. Now, at that point, Herner has been had a conversation about what to do, and they really didn't have an option, right? It's the illusion of choice. You can either try to continue with this pregnancy when that poses a threat to your own life, and the chances of the fetus surviving are slim to none. And even if the fetus survives, its quality of life, if it's one day born, is going to be really horrible. So ending the pregnancy was the merciful decision in their eyes. The problem is that there was still fetal cardiac activity, and Texas has a heartbeat ban in place. But there is an exception for medical emergencies. The problem is that the medical emergency exception within Texas's law is ill defined. So is this sufficiently medical emergency? Because the doctors did present her with an option. I mean, you could stay in the hospital for several weeks. So what do you do? And literally, their only option was for her to just wait to get more sick, wait for the infection to grow, and then she can terminate the pregnancy. That's the only thing that she was able to do. More on this. To Elizabeth, it seemed obvious that things were deteriorating. She had cramps and was passing clots of blood. Her discharge was yellow and smelled weird. But the hospital staff told her that those weren't the right symptoms yet of a growing infection in her uterus. They told her the signs of a more severe infection would include a fever of 100.4 degrees and chills. Her discharge had to be darker and had to smell foul really bad enough to make her retch. To Dr. Peaceman at Northwestern, it sounded like the hospital's clinicians were using the most common clinical signs of Coriamnionitis as a guideline. If Elizabeth exhibited enough of them, then it would be possible to document the encroaching infection and therefore terminate the pregnancy under the Laws Medical Emergency Clause, he said. Elizabeth found this maddening, quote, at first I was really enraged at the hospital and administration, she says. To them, my life was not in danger enough. Their conundrum became painfully distressingly clear, wait to get sicker or wait until the fetal heartbeat ceased. Either way, she saw nothing ahead but fear and grief prolonged, delayed and amplified. Now as time went on, her pain and discomfort got worse. The couple grew increasingly desperate. There was one moment where she was very sick and they did an ultrasound and there was still fetal cardiac activity so they couldn't end the pregnancy there. So they began to contemplate just leaving the state because it was so bad that they were worried that it was only going to get worse and further threaten her life until she felt a huge gush of fluid from her body. And the odor was horrible as doctors had described, which would sufficiently, you know, indicate that it was an infection. And that's when finally they were able to induce her. And then when she was induced, she just sat there and she bawled her eyes out because she wanted to have a baby. So even if she went through all of this pain, there was still that grief there. But that grief, that pain was prolonged because of Texas's draconian law. Now I could say a lot about why this law is terrible, but I think that her words are more important. Here's what she says about it. She places the blame for the ensuing medical trauma on the Republican legislatures who passed the state's anti-abortion law on Texas Governor Greg Abbott who signed it and on the inflamed political rhetoric which Elizabeth says only sees abortion as one thing, a black and white issue, when abortion has all these gray areas. When Roe v. Wade fell in June, Elizabeth's pain and anger surged up again. Quote, you know, they paint this woman into being this individual that doesn't care about her life, doesn't care about the life of the children she creates or whatever, and she just recklessly and negligently goes out and gets abortions all willy nilly left and right, she says. Quote, abortions are sometimes needed out of an act of an emergency, out of an act of saving a woman's life or hell. It honestly, it shouldn't even get to the point where you're having to save a woman's life. But that's where we're at in some states. Women like Elizabeth are forced to literally roll the dice with their life in order to qualify legally for an abortion. And even if they qualify, a doctor might not necessarily feel comfortable administering that procedure. So they force that woman to get ultrasound after ultrasound as we learned about another woman with her experience. It's just, it's so barbaric. It's, it's morally reprehensible. And personally, Elizabeth wouldn't get an abortion. She's pro-choice. She thinks that women should have the ability to control their own reproductive rights. But before this, she said she would never get an abortion. But I mean, in these instances, where the life of the mother is in danger, of course, that should be necessary. So she, in principle, agrees with the pro-lifers, right? The people who don't think you should get abortions as a form of contraception. But yet, because of this draconian anti-abortion law, it's hurting people who even want to have pregnancies, who want to have babies who end up having miscarriages, unfortunately. And now, because of this experience, they've been traumatized. And even if they one day want to try again to have a child, now they're not going to do it in the near future. They're waiting. So we have this situation where women who want to have babies are getting miscarriages and then they're experiencing a terrible situation in the state of Texas where they can't get access to the procedure needed because doctors are afraid that they'll be charged with doing an abortion. And so these women now decide to just not have babies. This is what the pro-life movement is doing. This is what the forced-brother movement is doing. These people are completely ignorant to medical procedures. People like Greg Abbott are ignorant to the facts of pregnancies. They don't know the first thing about what it means to be pregnant, what a miscarriage entails, and what removing the fetus after a woman miscarries entails. They're so ignorant. We have men dictating health decisions of women when they are completely out of their league. They have no idea, but they just superimpose their own values on everyone and force them to live based on their deluded evangelical fundamentalist beliefs. It's infuriating, but I think that these stories are really important and I feel inclined as an ally to share them because this isn't going to be the last story. It's not the first story. These stories will continue to happen. It's not just women who want to get abortions who are affected by this. Women who have miscarriages where doctors are afraid to do a DNC and remove the dead fetus because they don't want to be charged are also part of this story as well. It's a really broad picture. It's not just black and white as Elizabeth eloquently stated. So these stories are important and I will continue to share them.