 So, I didn't actually know that this was a thing, but we're finding out a lot in post-Roe America. This is from the Kansas City Star. Women in Missouri can't get a divorce while pregnant. Many fear what this means post-Roe. In Missouri, divorce cases cannot be finalized if a woman is pregnant since a custody agreement must first be in place. Multiple attorneys told the star that custody agreement cannot be completed until the child is born. So now, since you can't get an abortion, if you're with an abusive spouse and you're pregnant, there's no escape. You can't get a divorce. That is, that's gross. I mean, this is legally making women second-class citizens. They have less rights than men in the state of Missouri and now in many states in the United States. But I want to share this video. This is from CNN. I believe this was originally on local news, but CNN picked it up. So this woman explains how she was forced to carry a dead fetus within her for two weeks because of anti-abortion laws in her state. Let's watch. Marlene Estelle and Adie De Silva have always wanted a little brother or sister for their daughter, Adelina. Instead, what they got was a nightmare because of a Texas anti-abortion law. I get so angry that I was treated this way because of laws that were passed by men who have never been pregnant and never will be. Estelle's nightmare started out as a dream come true. After months of trying, she became pregnant late last summer. We were super excited because we didn't think I could get pregnant. An ultrasound at seven and a half weeks showed all was well. But at an ultrasound two weeks later. She said, there is no heartbeat. There is no viable pregnancy. Estelle asked her doctor for a standard treatment, a surgery to remove the fetal remains. She says her doctor refused. That surgery, commonly known as a DNC, is the same procedure used to abort a living fetus. She said, well, because of the new law that's passed, you're going to have to get another ultrasound for me to be able to even do anything for you. Overwhelmed emotionally and physically. The pain would get so severe, it would be hard to walk. She went to get a second invasive ultrasound at an imaging center, describing it later in a YouTube video. Someone shoves a wand in my sensitive area and tells me, hey, you lost your baby again. I shouldn't have to go through that twice. So you had to hear it twice that you lost a baby. It's cut rich. Just stop for a moment and acknowledge the context here. This is somebody who wanted a child, right? There's this notion from conservatives who believe that women are using abortion as a form of birth control and they're very flippant. They get pregnant and then eight months down the line, they have a change of heart and they think, oh, I want an abortion. That's not the way that it works. Banning abortion also affects women like this, who maybe she's aligned with Republicans. I have no idea. It could be somebody who's anti-abortion, I'm assuming not now, but she could think that abortion is something that she would never do herself. So perhaps she's aligned philosophically with Republicans. But yet this is still harming her. She was forced to be in pain because she couldn't get a procedure from doctors who were terrified that they would be prosecuted or lose their licenses. This is insanity. I'm sorry. That's okay. Because you already know what you're going to see. Yeah, it's like it's double trauma, right? First of all, she learns that the pregnancy is not viable, which she wanted to have a baby. So that's sad. And then the pain compounds when she learns that she's going to have to carry around a dead fetus for weeks and deal with the pain associated with that. So barbaric and cruel. This country is horrible. I mean, Texas, what a despicable state. A despicable state to enact laws like this that put women through this. It's truly fucking morally reprehensible. She's just like seeing it twice, being told that you're not going to be a mom. Even after that second ultrasound, would your obstetrician give you the surgical procedure? No. No. Stell had to go get yet another ultrasound showing her dead fetus. So you were walking around carrying a dead fetus. And just emotionally carrying it around and just knowing that there's nothing you could do. It just feels very, it's like I can't grieve or move past it because I'm just walking around carrying it. And I'm assuming that she has to get multiple ultrasounds to legally build this case before the doctor performs this procedure so they can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt the fetus was dead. They did not do an abortion on a live fetus. Like they're trying to create a legal case. The doctors are for, you know, in the event they're prosecuted. That's what they have to put women through. Doctors are saying, I just don't feel comfortable yet. So she, you're putting women in this position when they have miscarriages that they have to supply the doctors with a mountain of evidence to make sure that they are protected from lawsuits. This is so, so despicable. But this is what we knew would happen. Dr. Lillian Shapiro has been an OBGYN in Atlanta for more than 30 years. When a woman is walking around with a dead fetus for weeks because she can't get a surgical procedure, what's the danger to her? She can develop an infection that can make her sterile and never able to have children again. Or even worse. The baby dies inside. The baby starts to release parts of its tissue that can get into the mother's blood supply. It can cause organ failure. It can cause death. In Texas and some other states, a doctor who does the right thing. I just got a positive point out. But this is, this is what the pro-lifers wanted. They put women in this situation where their policies could lead to death. But they're pro-life, don't worry. They're the ones who are moral. They're the ones who are philosophically pro-life. They care about life. Yet they subject women to these barbaric conditions that could kill them. And surgically removes a dead fetus could be vulnerable to an expensive lawsuit. Any private citizen can walk in the court and say, I think Dr. Smith performed an abortion. And citizens aren't incentivized to bring such cases. They can win more than $10,000. That's right. So Texas, with their anti-abortion law, they deputized citizens. And so if you're like this really poor person in the state of Texas, you know, you're struggling to get by. But maybe, you know, somebody who you don't like had a miscarriage and they don't have enough evidence. You can try to turn them in and get $10,000. You could do this to your own enemies. I mean, there's a similar example of this with the war on terror, where people in these countries who we were occupying, they were incentivized to turn other people in for terrorism. And what happened was they weren't catching more terrorists. They were just seeing people turn in their enemies. People turn in individual snitch on them for not being terrorists, but they didn't like them to get revenge. But they're doing that now to American citizens. So that way, if you know someone, you know, you're incentivized. I mean, $10,000. That's a lot of fucking money. So if you're broke, if you don't have a lot of money, if you can't pay the bills and feed your family, somebody in that situation could say, look, this is bad. I don't want to do this, but it's them or my family's starves. Like, I don't know if this particular scenario will come to fruition, but you put, when you put citizens against each other, things like this happen. You cultivate this climate of paranoia, where you turn people against each other. And that just adds another layer of insanity to this already barbaric law. But this is the modern Republican party. They're pro-life. And even when doctors can prove the fetus was dead, the doctor still has to be responsible for their own legal fees. They're gonna lose even if they win. And that's the chilling effect. They face this specter of potentially endless, ruinous litigation that they just can't stop, they can't avoid, they can't preempt. That's a great point. Because, yeah, even though the doctor is saying, get another ultrasound, another one, another one. I mean, they might still go out of business if they have to defend themselves. It's not easy to defend yourself in court. So while, you know, those ultrasounds and evidence that the fetus was already dead might stop them from going to prison, it's still gonna harm their practice. Wow. As I spoke with Stell, I thought back to how between my second and third children, I had a miscarriage that was handled very differently. They saw there was no heartbeat. They did a DNC. It allowed me to move on quickly and get pregnant again. And then I go pregnant again too. Right, and that's great. And that is the story that we wanna hear from people. Stell was not so lucky. She did finally manage to find a doctor to perform her DNC, but it took two weeks. She worries the nightmare could happen to her again. Are you trying to get pregnant again? No. Why not? I'm worried about getting infected, have something happen to me, and then my daughter's left without her mom. See, this is what you did, pro-lifers. Pro-lifers. This is what you did. Somebody who wanted to have a baby is now so fucking terrified because of the trauma that you put her through with these policies, that now she doesn't wanna have the baby. It's just too risky. This is what your policies did. This is what banning abortion looks like. This is what we warned you about, but you didn't listen. You said, no, no, no. We're pro-life. Don't tell me any facts. Don't tell me any statistics. Don't tell me about anything else. I just wanna do what I think feels right because feelings over facts. So I think that we should ban women from getting abortions, and I'm protecting babies. Yeah, you're not protecting babies. You're harming people. You're harming women. This is what this movement has collectively pushed for for 50 years. They did this. This is what they did to women. This is the result of pro-life policies. Contemplating moving away from Texas, away from their extended family, just so they can try to get pregnant again. Wow. Marlene Estelle pointed out the irony to me, Caitlyn, that a law forcing women to have children they don't want is forcing her to consider not having children she does want. Caitlyn? Elizabeth, thank you for that report, and also for sharing your own personal experience. I think that's really meaningful. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, as the stat said, one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. These are not uncommon stories. Just in the comment section, women are sharing their stories. I'm literally crying right now. I miscarried so I can imagine carrying a fetus for two weeks inside of you because no one will remove it. Why make someone suffer like that? That's so cruel and inhumane. Yeah. I mean, I've known women who had miscarriages and they wanted to have the child and it was extremely traumatic, but this just adds trauma to that. It adds insult to injury. I miscarried early in a pregnancy many years ago. I was gushing blood, lost a lot of it. If the hospital hadn't been able to do an emergency DNC, I likely would have died from blood loss. My heart goes out to all American women living through this male-made dystopia. Yeah, I mean, this is very common. I lost the baby at 27 weeks, but I had to carry that baby for another two weeks to this day 43 years later. I still heard as no one should have to go through this thankfully if there was anything to be thankful for at all, was that the two weeks time I came into labor without the nursing staff help, it actually wasn't until the last hour that they realized that I was in labor. It is the most horrible time for any woman and having an ultrasound, it really got even more gut-wrenching all medical procedure involving pregnancy should be between the woman and the doctor involved. The government should butt out. Exactly, exactly. This person, I've lost multiple pregnancies, it's devastating. I found out at a routine checkup past six months each time. No heartbeat, total devastation. They send you home knowing the pregnancy inside you is lost. You sit at home in a trance and wait for a call to come to the hospital to deliver. They had to induce each time it took days. Wow. And look, there are people who I know in my life who they're at risk for egg-topic pregnancies at unusually high risk for egg-topic pregnancies, which 100% of the time the fetus is not viable. But this is what Republicans wanted. This is the world that they are forcing us to live into. This is what theocracy looks like where you just traumatize women because you don't understand anything about abortions and pregnancies and you just superimpose your bizarre moral ideas onto other people. I mean, if you are pro-life, you are de facto pro-death because banning abortion isn't going to get rid of abortions. It's just that women will either have to seek out unsafe illegal abortions or they may have to wait to get a DNC if they have a miscarriage and that fetus could kill them. It's just, it's, I mean, women are second-class citizens in the United States of America. What a disgrace, what a despicable country. And so now that woman wants to move out of Texas. Can you blame her? Would you wanna live in a state where they would rather you die than get a DNC after you miscarried? I wouldn't wanna live in that state. I wouldn't want a woman that I love to live in that state. It's horrific.