Okay, But Why Don’t Abortion Law Exceptions Work?
In 2022, Amanda Zurawski almost died. She was pregnant with a baby girl she desperately wanted, but her water broke way too early, at 18 weeks. Doctors told her with absolute certainty that her baby wouldn’t survive, but because of a law in Texas, they couldn’t give her an abortion. They had to wait until the baby died inside of her and she went into septic shock, almost dying herself, before they could give her the medical care she needed. Now, she has permanent organ damage.
This is just one story of many. And the one common denominator is that they show us, with crystal clear clarity, that the abortion law exceptions that are supposed to help women aren’t actually working.
If Amanda’s miscarriage had happened just one week earlier, she would have been able to get the healthcare she needed. But because the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade that June, an abortion ban went into effect in Texas just a few days before her water broke. And unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between what people generally think will happen in a situation like this, and what actually happens. You might think that doctors are able to make an exception in a situation like Amanda’s, but that’s not the case. Doctors don’t have room to make judgement calls – They have to comply with the law or they could lose their medical license or even go to jail.
“Every time I share our story, my heart breaks. For the baby girl we wanted desperately. For the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely. For Josh, who feared he would lose me too. But I was lucky. I lived. So I’ll continue sharing our story, standing with women and families across the country today. Because of Donald Trump, more than one in three women of reproductive age in America lives under an abortion ban.”
The Harm Caused by Restrictive Abortion Laws
Amanda’s story isn’t an isolated incident. Since Roe vs. Wade was overturned, there have been several cases across the country of more women and children being harmed and traumatized by lack of access to the healthcare they need. Here are some of their stories:
- A 10-year-old girl in Ohio who became pregnant as a result of rape couldn’t get an abortion in her home state, and instead had to travel to Indiana. Childbirth can be life-threatening for someone that young, and yet Ohio’s 6-week abortion ban didn’t make an exception for her.
- Adriana Smith in Georgia was 9 weeks pregnant when she suffered multiple brain clots and was declared brain dead, but due to Georgia’s anti-abortion law, her body was kept on life support for months to keep the fetus alive. Georgia’s ban includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, but it doesn’t apply to this case because Adriana is already dead, which is a really disturbing loophole in the law.
If Adriana, or Amanda, or a ten-year-old rape victim aren’t exceptions to abortion laws, who is? And why should politicians get to decide? As Amanda said, she was lucky. She survived, when many women – like Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, and Neveah Craine, who all died due to delayed maternal healthcare – did not.
Regardless of your personal views about abortion, restrictive laws like these aren’t the answer. “Exceptions” don’t work. We have to trust women, families, and doctors to make the best decisions they can for themselves.
We can’t change the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision (which overturned Roe v. Wade), but we can push for an end to state abortion bans. We’ve already seen it work, like the constitutional amendment that was recently passed in Ohio that protects the right to abortion in their state constitution. It isn’t easy, but we owe it to all these women, and all of the women whose stories have yet to be written.