Last week, I wrote a pointed column criticizing Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and his fellow Democrats for not playing hardball with increasingly recalcitrant Republicans. I wrote that, while the committee held a hearing last summer on the legal ramifications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it hadn’t brought forward women and doctors to testify about the disastrous, real-world consequences of abortion bans that followed the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
On Wednesday, the committee held just such a hearing, inviting a Texas woman who nearly died because of her state’s abortion ban; an esteemed law professor; a practicing OB/GYN; a doctor from an antiabortion group; and a senior research associate from Notre Dame — a Catholic university.
The most compelling and heartbreaking testimony came from Amanda Zurawski, who lives in Texas. During her prepared remarks, she explained that after sending out invitations to her baby shower she began experiencing symptoms, her membranes ruptured, and she was “told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable.” However, her doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point — an abortion.”
Zurawski couldn’t very well drive to a “safe” state. (“Developing sepsis — which can kill quickly — in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider.”) Instead, she had to wait — for either the fetus’s heart to stop or to get really sick. She nearly died from sepsis, which is why the standard of care in such circumstances is to perform an abortion before the woman gets very sick and risks death.
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What happened was nothing short of horrifying:
Not only did she suffer physical and mental trauma; she might not be able to have children in the future. As she put it, “The barbaric restrictions that are being passed across the country are having real life implications on real people.” She is now one of five women (in addition to two doctors) suing the state of Texas.
Her poignant denunciation of politicians who put her through this is worth listening to and watching in full:
It’s a shame neither of her state’s senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both of whom are on the Judiciary Committee, bothered to be present to hear her.
The impact on doctors has also been horrific (which explains why more are avoiding states with abortion bans). Dr. Nisha Verma, a fellow for Physicians for Reproductive Health, explained in her prepared remarks, “Because of a law that is not based in medicine or science, I am forced to turn away patients that I know how to care for.” She continued, “I have had adolescents with chronic medical conditions that make their pregnancies very high-risk, women with irregular periods who don’t realize they are pregnant until after six weeks, and couples with highly desired pregnancies who receive a terrible diagnosis of a fetal anomaly, cry when they learn they can’t receive their abortion in our state, and beg me to help them.”
Contrary to the claptrap spread by the forced-birth crowd, Verma contended that “abortion is extremely safe and none of the arbitrary barriers imposed by politicians make it any safer.” A 2018 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine confirmed “the safety record of abortion and pointed out that the biggest threat to patient safety is the litany of medically unnecessary regulations that raise costs and delay procedures, ultimately putting patients’ health at risk.”
On Wednesday, the committee held just such a hearing, inviting a Texas woman who nearly died because of her state’s abortion ban; an esteemed law professor; a practicing OB/GYN; a doctor from an antiabortion group; and a senior research associate from Notre Dame — a Catholic university.
The most compelling and heartbreaking testimony came from Amanda Zurawski, who lives in Texas. During her prepared remarks, she explained that after sending out invitations to her baby shower she began experiencing symptoms, her membranes ruptured, and she was “told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable.” However, her doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point — an abortion.”
Zurawski couldn’t very well drive to a “safe” state. (“Developing sepsis — which can kill quickly — in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider.”) Instead, she had to wait — for either the fetus’s heart to stop or to get really sick. She nearly died from sepsis, which is why the standard of care in such circumstances is to perform an abortion before the woman gets very sick and risks death.
Follow Jennifer Rubin's opinionsFollow
What happened was nothing short of horrifying:
If she had been alone or had lacked good medical care to rescue her, she would have died.
Not only did she suffer physical and mental trauma; she might not be able to have children in the future. As she put it, “The barbaric restrictions that are being passed across the country are having real life implications on real people.” She is now one of five women (in addition to two doctors) suing the state of Texas.
Her poignant denunciation of politicians who put her through this is worth listening to and watching in full:
It’s a shame neither of her state’s senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both of whom are on the Judiciary Committee, bothered to be present to hear her.
The impact on doctors has also been horrific (which explains why more are avoiding states with abortion bans). Dr. Nisha Verma, a fellow for Physicians for Reproductive Health, explained in her prepared remarks, “Because of a law that is not based in medicine or science, I am forced to turn away patients that I know how to care for.” She continued, “I have had adolescents with chronic medical conditions that make their pregnancies very high-risk, women with irregular periods who don’t realize they are pregnant until after six weeks, and couples with highly desired pregnancies who receive a terrible diagnosis of a fetal anomaly, cry when they learn they can’t receive their abortion in our state, and beg me to help them.”
Contrary to the claptrap spread by the forced-birth crowd, Verma contended that “abortion is extremely safe and none of the arbitrary barriers imposed by politicians make it any safer.” A 2018 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine confirmed “the safety record of abortion and pointed out that the biggest threat to patient safety is the litany of medically unnecessary regulations that raise costs and delay procedures, ultimately putting patients’ health at risk.”
