1). “A Project 2025 adviser mockingly asked someone to ‘track down’ victims of abortion bans — 17,000 women responded: Derisive TikTok post received viral response from women who have suffered since end of Roe v Wade”, Sep 13, 2024, Oliver O'Connell, The Independent, at < https://www.the-independent.
2). “Project 2025 Staffer's Viral Video on Abortion Massively Backfires: John McEntee accidentally made the strongest argument possible for abortion rights”, Sep 13, 2024, Troy Matthews, MTN, at < https://meidasnews.com/news/
3). Instagram Post with Video of John McEntee making part of his vicious flippant statement and Carmen Broesder Replying, Instagram, at < https://www.instagram.com/p/C_
4). “Yes, Abortion Bans Are Literally Killing Women, (Life After Roe)”, Sep 16, 2024, Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut, at < https://www.thecut.com/
5). “Idaho woman shares 19-day miscarriage on TikTok, says state's abortion laws prevented her from getting care: Carmen Broesder, 35, said she visited the ER three times before receiving care”, Jan 21, 2023, Mary Kekatos with Video by Jessie DiMartino, ABC News, includes 11:09 long video “What's next for abortion rights in America?”, at < https://abcnews.go.com/Health/
6). “Louisiana Docs Are Running Hemorrhaging Drills”, Sep 17, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introductionby dmorista: A flurry of commentary about abortion / reproductive health care issues filled the internet when a 2-year old case, in which a healthy young woman died after being denied basic abortion / reproductive health care, was publicized in a path-breaking article in ProPublica a couple of days ago. Just 3 days earlier John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during the Donald Trump presidency (who was fired by Kelly because he had a gambling problem and then placed in the White House Presidential Personnel Office by Trump personally), and currently a high official in the Project 2025 Operation at the Heritage Foundation, posted a Tik Tok where he sneered saying at the women of America saying:
“ 'Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v Wade was overturned?'
“ 'Don’t hold your breath,' ”
McEntee's comment provoked 19,000 comments, as of Saturday the 14th, by women about horrors they have already suffered due to Trump's hand picked Supreme Court and its overturning of Roe. This current flurry of comments in response to McEntee is discussed in Item 1)., “ A Project 2025 adviser mockingly ….”, Item 2)., “Project 2025 Staffer's Viral Video ….” Item 3)., Instagram Post with Video of John McEntee …., and Item 4)., “Yes, Abortion Bans ….”, and previous reporting on the situation of Carmen Broesder was discussed in early 2023 in Item 5)., “Idaho woman shares 19-day miscarriage ….”. The massive outpouring of responses, many of them detailing horrific suffering and dangerous health outcomes many times approaching death, shows just how bad the situation has become for pregnant women in the U.S.., particularly in the retrograde ruled Red States with their general Trump Bans. Item 2 provides a “short list” of 9 horror stories inflicted on U.S. women by the Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth movement's agenda posted below:
"Almost lost my ovaries at 21 while begging for a D&C they wouldn't give me until I was screaming at the drs..finally agreed because I was measuring behind."
"My water suddenly broke and I went to the er, they sent me home. Started cramping and went back to the ER. I miscarried at 17 weeks in the restroom at the ER because I wasn't deemed an emergency."
"One of my friends who bled for three days in a hospital room while her baby died inside her and the hospital wanted to help her but couldn't do anything"
"I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to wait until it made me septic to get the surgery to save my life."
"My daughter had to drive 12 hours from Texas with an ectopic that nearly killed her. She couldn't get a pill that would have saved her but ended up needing surgery because of the delay in care."
"Had a cyst burst inside my uterus while pregnant causing a mc [miscarriage]. The on call doc said it's best to wait a week to see if it comes out naturally. Now I can have 0 children bc my uterus is gone."
"I was so excited to find out I was pregnant with my second child, after miscarrying 5 times. In my 11th week, I started to spot and then gush blood. I was filling a super maxi pad every 15 min."
"It almost happened to my wife this year, it's called a uterine dehiscence and we were 22 weeks and one day pregnant she began to rupture...she pretty much became a vessel in the state of Kansas."
"Hi, I had to beg for help during my miscarriage and had to get a blood transfusion and stay in a hospital for over a week."
So far there are 4 documented cases of American Women dying because they were denied timely abortion / reproductive care, 2 in Georgia and 2 in Texas. The fact that 19,000 women (by Saturday) replied with so many horrific accounts shows that the real number of women who have died, because they were denied timely abortion / reproductive care, is certainly in the hundreds.
Finally in Item 6)., “Louisiana Docs Are ….” the intrepid Jessica Valenti discusses the terrible and totally avoidable death of Amber Nicole Thurman at the hands of the Missouri Abortion Ban Policies, the work of Trump, the Supreme Court, and Brian Kemp the fascist governor of Georgia. Whatever one thinks of the Democratic Party, it is vitally important that Trump is kept out of the White House and that a working majority of the two houses in the Congress is achieved. While younger women are strongly opposed to the Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth policies of the Rethugs, they are still registered in lower numbers than are more conservative older women. Valenti, as usual, discusses developments, positive and negative, in Abortion Politics from around the U.S.
Glamour Magazine conducted a recent poll that, among other things, found that: “While support for Democrats is much higher in the 18-to-29 and 30-to-49 age groups (a 60-40 split in the Dems’ favor), only 56% of women aged 18 to 29 say they are registered to vote this year. This is the lowest of any age group by a wide margin. In the next oldest group, 30-to-49-year-olds, 68% are registered. (Emphases added) {See, “Glamour’s 2024 Presidential Election Poll: The Results Are In”, Sep 5, 2024, Natasha Pearlman, Glamour, at < https://www.glamour.com/story/
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Project 2025 adviser unwittingly highlights cruelty of abortion bans with glib TikTok
A former Trump administration staffer, now a senior adviser in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, accidentally made a case for abortion rights in a failed attempt to undermine an answer by Kamala Harris during Tuesday’s presidential debate.
John McEntee, who served as Donald Trump’s director of White House personnel, is one of the founders of The Right Stuff, a right-wing dating site, and has a large following on TikTok.
His posts feature him sitting at a table, eating, across from the camera, presumably to mimic a date-like setting, while he makes a glib and offensive right-wing talking point, often misogynistic or racist.
In a post this week, which has 1.8 million views on TikTok, he says: “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v Wade was overturned?”
“Don’t hold your breath,” he adds, flippantly.
Well, he could have held his breath because the replies came in thick and fast.
The post now has more than 17,000 comments and they are almost all women sharing their stories of being turned away from emergency rooms in agony, bleeding out in parking lots, at home, in public bathrooms, and sometimes for months afterward.
Others talk about miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, losing their ability to have children, and driving across multiple states to get treatment where it was still legal — often while hemorrhaging. Most of the stories appear to involve wanted or planned pregnancies.
One of the most widely circulating responses to the clip is a video from a woman called Carmen Broesder that was shared on Instagram by the accounts “wordclown” and “agirlhasnopresident”.
Broesder’s ordeal is hard to hear but reflects the experience of many others. During her 19-day miscarriage in Idaho she was given just one dose of pain medicine, turned away from three emergency rooms, blacked out due to blood loss, could not eat because of her pain, and even developed AFib, a heart condition.
”I stopped eating so my daughter stopped eating. So I had to eat with tears running down my face cause it was actually painful to eat ‘cause I was in so much pain, everything hurt,” she recalls. “But my daughter needed to eat.”
Broesder adds: “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws.”
“But yeah, women are bleeding out in parking lots,” she says. “We exist.”
During Tuesday’s debate against Trump, Harris responded to a question on abortion: “Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v Wade. And they did exactly as they intended, and now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans.”
Harris added: “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage are being denied care in an emergency room because their health care providers are afraid, they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that.”
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Project 2025 Staffer's Viral Video on Abortion Massively Backfires
Sep 13, 2024
John McEntee, former director of White House personnel in the Trump Administration, and a key member of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 team, has gone viral with a video that could not be more helpful to Kamala Harris and the movement for abortion rights in a post-Roe United States.
McEntee has a large following on TikTok where he makes videos under the name of his MAGA-only dating app he founded with start up capital from Peter Thiel, called "Date Right Stuff."
McEntee's videos always feature the Project 2025 chief of HR sitting down at a table in a restaurant eating while making pithy racist and offensive observations, typically about gender ideology and diversity equity and inclusion, that Trump supporters can't help but enthusiastically devour.
In his latest viral take, McEntee poses a question about abortion access in red states that came up during Tuesday night's presidential debate.
"Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?" he asks. "Don't hold your breath."
McEntee asked, and women answered. Many made video responses to McEntee telling their own stories. One particularly powerful video from Carmen Broesder with account name @geekynerdbitchcarmen was shared by WordClown and AGirlHasNoPresident on Instagram and received nearly five million views:
McEntee received over 11,000 comments on his video, mostly from women describing their own stories, or stories from relatives or friends, of brutal and horrific medical complications that have resulted from providers refusing to provide medically necessary abortion in red states for fear of prosecution.
Some examples of the heartbreaking comments included: (WARNING: graphic)
- "Almost lost my ovaries at 21 while begging for a D&C they wouldn't give me until I was screaming at the drs..finally agreed because I was measuring behind."
- "My water suddenly broke and I went to the er, they sent me home. Started cramping and went back to the ER. I miscarried at 17 weeks in the restroom at the ER because I wasn't deemed an emergency."
- "One of my friends who bled for three days in a hospital room while her baby died inside her and the hospital wanted to help her but couldn't do anything"
- "I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to wait until it made me septic to get the surgery to save my life."
- "My daughter had to drive 12 hours from Texas with an ectopic that nearly killed her. She couldn't get a pill that would have saved her but ended up needing surgery because of the delay in care."
- "Had a cyst burst inside my uterus while pregnant causing a mc [miscarriage]. The on call doc said it's best to wait a week to see if it comes out naturally. Now I can have 0 children bc my uterus is gone."
- "I was so excited to find out I was pregnant with my second child, after miscarrying 5 times. In my 11th week, I started to spot and then gush blood. I was filling a super maxi pad every 15 min."
- "It almost happened to my wife this year, it's called a uterine dehiscence and we were 22 weeks and one day pregnant she began to rupture...she pretty much became a vessel in the state of Kansas."
- "Hi, I had to beg for help during my miscarriage and had to get a blood transfusion and stay in a hospital for over a week."
McEntee unintentionally provided a forum for the literally tens of thousands of woman who are being harmed by Republican anti-choice extremism to speak up and let everyone know the consequences of Donald Trump's abortion bans, and there are certainly many more that we don't know about and haven't come forward.
All it took was for someone to ask.
Yes, Abortion Bans Are Literally Killing Women
Her name was Amber Nicole Thurman. She was 28 years old. She loved being a mom to her 6-year-old son, and she had plans to go to nursing school. And she was one of the first people to have died as a direct result of the abortion bans implemented since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to a new report from ProPublica.
Thurman lived in Georgia, which prohibits terminating a pregnancy after around six weeks, or two weeks after the last missed period. She died in August 2022, after a local hospital delayed treating her for 20 hours following an incomplete medication abortion, according to an official state committee report reviewed by ProPublica. The committee, which included ten doctors who evaluated Thurman’s case, concluded there was a “good chance” her death could have been prevented had the hospital treated her in a timely manner. Just as has happened to dozens of women across the country in the past two years, physicians appear to have hesitated to provide Thurman the care she needed out of fear of breaking the law.
Coat-hanger imagery was inescapable during protests in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision as a reminder of the lengths to which desperate women went to end their pregnancies in the mid-20th century. And yet as people who’ve worked in abortion care in any capacity could tell you, medicine and practical support for abortion seekers have advanced considerably in the decades since the pre-Roe era. The proliferation of abortion pills and access to information about them, either online or through community networks, has made self-managed abortion safer than ever. So advocates warned that when pregnant people died as a result of post-Dobbs abortion bans — because it was a matter of when, not if — it’d be likely that their stories would more closely resemble that of Savita Halappanavar, who died in 2012 when a hospital in Ireland denied her emergency care, than that of Gerri Santorro, who bled out alone in a motel room in Connecticut in 1964 after attempting to self-induce an abortion.
These two women, generations and countries apart, have been symbols of the global fight for abortion rights. In 1973, Ms. Magazine ran the crime scene photo of Santorro’s death in an article without identifying her; the devastating portrait helped galvanize the modern abortion-rights movement in the U.S. Half a century later, Halappanavar’s case catalyzed the successful push to legalize abortion in Ireland. It was a clear-cut instance where doctors should have provided her emergency care, yet cited the Catholic country’s stringent abortion ban to deny that care at the time.
Thurman’s death seems to follow the contours of Halappanavar’s, according to ProPublica. Because of Georgia’s ban, Thurman was forced to travel to North Carolina to get an abortion. She hit traffic in her hourslong journey and was late to the appointment; the clinic said it couldn’t hold her scheduled surgical abortion. The clinic told Thurman that her two options were to reschedule or to have a medication abortion, since she was around nine or ten weeks pregnant. Thurman had already lost a day of work, paid for child care, and traveled for hours, so she chose the two-pill medication-abortion regimen.
Research has found taking abortion pills is safer than taking Tylenol or Viagra. Out of nearly 6 million patients who took mifepristone between 2000 and 2022, there were only 32 deaths, most of which were not connected to the drug itself. According to ProPublica, Thurman’s abortion went on as usual after she took mifepristone, the first pill in the regimen which stops the pregnancy from growing, in the clinic. But something went wrong after she took misoprostol, the second drug which helps expel the contents of the uterus, a day later. She was in pain for days afterward and bleeding more than she should, soaking through more than one pad per hour. On the evening of August 18, five days after Thurman drove to and from North Carolina, she vomited blood and passed out at home. Her partner called an ambulance and she arrived at Piedmont Henry Hospital in the Atlanta suburbs at 6:51 p.m.
The state committee examined medical records showing that Thurman was displaying symptoms of an incomplete, septic abortion, according to the report. Her white-blood-cell count was dangerously high; her blood pressure was low; an ultrasound showed there was tissue in her uterus; and her physician noted a foul odor during a pelvic exam. The course of treatment should have been a D&C (dilation and curettage) to evacuate the uterus, according to the report. The hospital network itself describes D&C as a “fairly common, minor surgical procedure” used during miscarriages. But the exception in Georgia’s abortion ban for cases where the pregnant person’s life is in danger is confusing and vague — and penalties for doctors found in violation of the law are high, including a sentence of up to a decade in prison. Georgia law says the procedure is not considered an abortion as long as physicians are removing a pregnancy following a “spontaneous abortion,” which legislators defined as “naturally occurring” in cases of miscarriage or stillbirth. Because Thurman disclosed to the hospital that she took medication, however, her abortion was not considered “spontaneous.”
Though an obstetrician diagnosed Thurman with “acute severe sepsis,” according to the report, she wasn’t given a D&C that night. By 5 a.m., she was in critical condition and doctors gave her more antibiotics in hopes of curbing the infection. By 6:45 a.m. — 12 hours after she first got to the hospital — Thurman was taken to the intensive-care unit, and by 9 a.m. her organs were failing, according to labwork. By noon, an ICU doctor told the OB/GYN on duty that Thurman’s condition continued to deteriorate, but she still hadn’t received a D&C. She was taken to an operating room at 2 p.m., where doctors started the procedure; it wasn’t enough to stabilize her, and the doctors performed a hysterectomy trying to save her. Thurman’s heart stopped in the middle of surgery.
Anti-abortion advocates will inevitably argue that Thurman’s death is not connected to Georgia’s abortion ban. You can see the spin on this case coming from a mile away: They’ll say this case shows that abortion pills are dangerous, despite their long track record of safety. They’ll argue that states should pass laws prohibiting patients from traveling for abortion care, arguing that doing so puts pregnant people at risk. They’ll blame doctors for purportedly misinterpreting the law, as they did in the case of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a Texas woman who died in the summer of 2022 following several life-threatening pregnancy complications and who may be alive today had she been given the choice to have an abortion.
If it was up to the anti-abortion movement, cases like Thurman’s would remain out of the public eye entirely. Just last week, John McEntee — a former Trump-administration official, a senior adviser to Project 2025, and a frequent TikTok troll — asked in a video: “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris said are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?” He smirked as he added, “Don’t hold your breath.”
Hundreds of women flooded the comment section of McEntee’s post with their own stories of being denied abortion care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other complications. Then there are the many well-publicized stories that have dominated headlines since Dobbs. There’s Jaci Statton, who was told to wait in the parking lot of an Oklahoma hospital until she was “crashing” in order to get an abortion for her nonviable, molar pregnancy. Anya Cook nearly bled out in the bathroom of a hair salon after her water broke at 17 weeks and a Florida hospital sent her home to pass the miscarriage. Kyleigh Thurman lost her fallopian tube and nearly died bleeding out after a Texas emergency room refused to treat her ectopic pregnancy. Amanda Zurawski nearly died of sepsis and will have trouble conceiving again after a Texas hospital sent her home rather than terminating her unviable pregnancy. A study published by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health just last week includes dozens of anecdotes from physicians who say abortion bans have forced them to deviate from standard medical practices, contributing to delays in care and worse health outcomes. Taken together, these cases prove the overturn of Roe unleashed a profound health-care crisis, even if the anti-abortion movement is determined to ignore it.
Any of these women could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. There are almost certainly more people who’ve died after being unable to access abortion care whom we just don’t know about yet — and maybe never will. But the fact remains that had the Supreme Court preserved a constitutional right to abortion, this 28-year-old mom would have had the option to terminate her pregnancy at a clinic in Georgia. Instead, Dobbs allowed the state to ban abortions, forcing Thurman to travel and to have a medication abortion that was not her first choice and likely making her doctors hesitate to act when her life depended on their help.
Thurman should be alive today. It is a direct consequence of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and Republicans’ anti-abortion legislation that she is not.
The Cut offers an online tool you can use to search by Zip Code for professional providers, including clinics, hospitals, and independent OB/GYNs, as well as for abortion funds, transportation options, and information for remote resources like receiving the abortion pill by mail. For legal guidance, contact Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 or the Abortion Defense Network.
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Idaho woman shares 19-day miscarriage on TikTok, says state's abortion laws prevented her from getting care
Carmen Broesder, 35, said she visited the ER three times before receiving care.
An Idaho woman who documented her 19-day miscarriage on social media said it was days before she could receive care due to the state's strict abortion laws.
Carmen Broesder, 35, from Nampa -- 20 miles west of Boise -- a mother-of-one was just six weeks pregnant when she began miscarrying on Dec. 8. However, she said it took eight days before she was given any medicine to manage her pain and to expel embryonic tissue, and several more days for the miscarriage to end.
In a series of TikTok videos -- along with medical records, photos and videos shared with ABC News -- she said that despite bleeding heavily and suffering intense cramps, she was denied a dilation and curettage, or D&C, which removes tissue from inside the uterus, multiple times.
MORE: How some providers are working around abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned
Because a D&C can also be used when providing abortion care, she told ABC News she believes it's directly tied to Idaho's abortion ban.
"Why should I get to death's door to get help?" Broesder said. "I am prepared to be a mother. I am a mother and I wanted to have another baby. That is my story and it almost killed me."
Different than other miscarriages
After Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer, Idaho passed a strict near-total abortion ban in August 2022 with only exceptions for rape, incest or if a pregnant person's life is in danger.
Broesder said she wasn't seeking an abortion when she went to the hospital the first time. She said she and her boyfriend had been trying to have a second child after the birth of her 16-month-old daughter, Lucy.
While trying to conceive, Broesder said she suffered other miscarriages, but she never experienced as much bleeding or as much pain as she did when she woke up on Thursday, Dec. 8.
"That was the most horrifying moment; I woke up and I had intense stomach pain," she said. "I couldn't stand up too much, and I go to the bathroom, and I was just bleeding. It was a horrific amount of blood loss where I instantly know this is not okay."
MORE: New abortion restrictions may push patients to more expensive, complicated care
After the bleeding wouldn't stop with a 12-hour menstrual disc or with a super plus tampon, Broesder went to a local hospital. Broesder said she told staff she thought she was experiencing a miscarriage and after they checked her in, she said she waited for hours for someone to examine her.
She said staff eventually performed an ultrasound and confirmed there was no detectable heartbeat but, because she had an OBGYN appointment on Monday, Dec. 12, they advised her to attend as scheduled.
During the OBGYN appointment, Broesder said an ultrasound technician also confirmed the lack of a heartbeat and told her to come back for a follow-up in two days. ABC News reached out to the doctor's office for a comment on their care for Broesder but did not hear back.
'I'm going to die before someone helps me'
Broesder said she felt like something still wasn't right with this miscarriage. She was still bleeding heavily and in pain but did not receive any medication.
"I'm feeling like no one's listening at this point," she said. "These people are supposed to help. So, I went home and kind of just suffered through."
Broesder said she felt like something still wasn't right with this miscarriage. She was still bleeding heavily and in pain but did not receive any medication either from the ER or her OBGYN.
"I'm feeling like no one's listening at this point," she said. "These people are supposed to help. So, I went home and kind of just suffered through."
However, the pain and the bleeding became so bad that Broesder went to the ER the next day, where she said she again waited for hours for someone to see her -- and where she made her first TikTok video about her miscarriage, which went viral.
"I've been actively miscarrying since the 8th," she said in the video, posted on Dec. 13. "I have gone to a doctor, and this is my second visit to the ER if you're wondering why women's rights matter. I'm just going to [expletive] bleed out on this table before somebody comes and actually helps me."
She said that she asked twice for a D&C, including from her own OBGYN.
OBGYNs told ABC News the "save the mother's life" exception of abortions bans -- which Broesder may have qualified for in Idaho -- is often vague and the language is unclear about what qualifies as a mother's life being in danger, what the risk of death is, and how imminent death must be before a provider can act.
Providers also may be worried about providing miscarriage care because it could be misconstrued as providing abortion care, and they could face legal repercussions.
"That's the optimal scenario, that doctors are able to provide the care that's necessary and evidence-based," Dr. Beverly Gray, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in Broesder's care, told ABC News. "I worry about other systems that are worried about how they could come under attack for taking care of a patient or could a doctor that's caring for the patient be prosecuted in some way. I think these are real fears that people are facing."
MORE: 6 months after overturning of Roe v. Wade, what abortion access looks like in America
Broesder was told by the second hospital that she had a complete miscarriage and was given tranexamic acid, medicine that controls bleeding and helps prevent excessive blood loss, according to medical records reviewed by ABC News, and sent home.
The hospital network, answering on behalf of both hospitals Broesder visited, said that "due to federal and state privacy laws, we cannot confirm nor deny that this patient was seen at our facilities" but that it "provides such medical care as required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act" when a pregnant woman suffers a medical emergency that requires the pregnancy to be terminated.
During this time, Broesder said she thought she was going to die.
"I was in so much pain I didn't know how much more my body could take," she said. "I had gone to the ER twice and I got turned away. I go to the OB, and I got turned away. I knew I couldn't afford much more visits for longevity afterwards to keep my family afloat. So, I was just like, well, it is what it is."
Finally receiving care
By this time, her very first TikTok video had gone viral – the app shows it currently has more than 620,000 views - and she had been making more videos to keep those following her story updated.
She said many of her new followers told her to go to the ER again and, on Dec. 16, she decided to drive to St. Luke's Boise Medical Center, where she was given a room and seen by a nurse.
Broesder said she requested a D&C and was denied again.
Dr. Frank Johnson, chief medical officer at St. Luke's Health System covering Boise, Elmore and McCall, who did not treat Broesder but spoke about her case with ABC News, said "looking over this particular situation...there was no additional need for an interventional procedure by the time that she arrived here at St. Luke's."
So, I think in this particular case, medically appropriate care was provided to the patient," he added.
While D&Cs are generally performed to terminate a pregnancy in the later stages, Dr. Sadia Haider, an OBGYN at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told ABC News it can be provided if a patient is bleeding heavily in early pregnancy and miscarrying.
"D&Cs can be performed at any point in pregnancy, including early pregnancy and in the case of a miscarriage if someone is bleeding heavily," she said, commenting in a general sense and not on Broesder's care specifically. "What I will say, as a clinician, miscarriage is a very common occurrence in pregnancy and for patients that are clinically 'less stable,' which is what we call them when they're bleeding a lot, the best course of action is a D&C and that is what you use to treat an early pregnancy in this situation."
In an audio recording of the conversation Broesder had with the physician about why she couldn't get a D&C, he said "there is some trepidation" about performing one in the wake of Idaho's new abortion law.
"I felt like 50 pounds of bricks got lifted off my shoulders and got replaced with like 50 pounds of raging fire," she said. "But I couldn't do anything because this guy's helping me so I'm not mad at him and it's not his fault. I'm obviously mad at the law."
Johnson did say, at St. Luke's, doctors do sometimes have to consult with the legal team on cases to make sure they're staying within the bounds of the law, although it's not clear if this occurred in Broesder's case.
"That's been a new situation, really a necessity based on the ways that the laws are currently devised and written," he said. "Traditionally, I think it is best when those conversations can occur between a physician, a woman and her family, and having to add the complexity of needing to figure out how to navigate a new law is an added challenge."
MORE: Here's what voters decided on abortion questions on Election Day
Haider, who was not involved in Broesder's care, said the fear of criminalization and inability to provide care, even in situations where abortion providers might deem it necessary, might prevent them from acting.
"They might have initially acted sooner, they might have acted more aggressively to provide, taken more actions to intervene if they could have and by delaying that care, you're putting the patients in a worse situation clinically and more at risk of bad outcome," she told ABC News, speaking in a general sense.
Broesder said the doctor at St. Luke's did discover part of the embryo was stuck in her cervix, so she received a procedure to remove part of the remaining tissue and was prescribed misoprostol, which treats postpartum bleeding, induces labor and causes an abortion.
From the day Broesder's miscarriage started to when it ended, she said it was a total of 19 days of bleeding.
She said while she has been encouraged by the supportive comments and messages she has received on social media since her first video, she does not intend to try for another baby. She said the Idaho law worries her that if something similar happens, she could die due to fear from medical professionals about administering care.
"After this, even without the possibility or desire to have a baby, like, why would I want to go through that pain again?" Broesder said. "And why would I want to go through my daughter almost losing her mom again to have another child? That seems selfish and wrong."
She added, "I did not deserve to have to beg for my life for eight days and nobody else does either."
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Louisiana Docs Are Running Hemorrhaging Drills
Click to skip ahead: In Post-Dobbs Deaths, the country reacts to a Georgia woman’s story. In the States, more nightmare stories of care denied from Georgia, along with news from Missouri, North Carolina and Alaska. In Ballot Measure Updates, news from Florida and Missouri. And In the Nation, Republicans have once again stopped a bill that would have protected IVF.
Post-Dobbs Deaths
The reaction to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman in Georgia has been swift, with media coverage across the country and abroad, and abortion rights activists pointing out that what happened to Amber wasn’t just preventable, but predictable.
Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said that Amber’s death offered “substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people.” And Regina Davis Moss, the CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, said in a statement that “this is the “post-Dobbs reality for many Black women, girls, gender expansive people”.
Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke out about Amber’s death, placing the blame directly on Donald Trump:
"This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school. This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down. In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
Reporters have reached out to Trump’s campaign, but so far they haven’t said anything. Here’s what they did do: A few hours after Amber’s death was reported, JD Vance gave a speech calling the end of Roe a victory. For whom? Certainly not for Amber.
The response from the anti-abortion movement more broadly, of course, has been entirely predictable. As Andrea González-Ramírez, wrote at The Cut, “you can see the spin on this case coming from a mile away.”
Anti-abortion activists claim that Amber didn’t die because she was denied vital care, but because she took abortion medication to begin with. (Which is not only false, but also shames and blames Amber for her own death.) Other conservative outlets have also blamed doctors and the Atlanta hospital that treated Amber, arguing that it’s legal to give women life-saving care. (While ignoring the fact that providers are operating under the threat of prison time.)
Once again, we knew this reaction was coming. In 2022, I wrote a column tracking how conservatives were already testing out talking points because they knew that abortion ban deaths were inevitable. Their primary message? Blame doctors.
Finally, I want to point out something really important. The reason Amber’s death is dominating the national conversation, as it should, is because ProPublica did not mince words about what happened to her: An abortion ban killed Amber, and that’s exactly what they wrote. That’s why people are sharing her story, why other media outlets have picked it up, and why politicians are reacting.
The truth is that Amber’s story is not the first reported post-Dobbs death—that was actually Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, whose death was reported by The New Yorker. But instead of saying outright that Texas’ abortion ban killed Yeni, the publication framed their article as a question, asking, “Did An Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?”
“I really do have empathy for mainstream publications. One of the challenges in reporting these stories is that abortion bans don’t exist in a vacuum: they’re part of a broader system that fails women in multiple ways. Whether it’s health care costs, racial and gendered bias, maternal health deserts or the proliferation of religiously-affiliated hospitals—there are an infinite number of dangerous combinations that can contribute to deaths like Yeni’s.
But nuance doesn’t erase the obvious truth: Abortion bans kill. We have to be willing to say it.”
So thank you to ProPublica for saying it. This the kind of clear-eyed reporting and publishing that the country needs.
In the States
Horrifically, on the same day that ProPublica reported Amber’s death in Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff was convening a subcommittee meeting in Atlanta about the impact of the state’s 6-week ban. OBGYN Carrie Cwiak testified about the nightmare of trying to provide patients care, telling legislators that “because of Georgia’s abortion ban, clinics and physicians have no choice but to turn away patients in need of essential health care.”
Two women who were denied abortion care, despite risks to their mental and physical health, also testified. Yasmein Ziyad spoke about miscarrying at 9 weeks, and her doctor denying her treatment because, he said, “I don’t want to lose my license or be arrested.” He sent Ziyad home, where she experienced massive and unnecessary pain for a week. By the time doctors finally agreed to give her care, Ziyad describes screaming and crying uncontrollably because of how bad the pain had become.
“I didn’t have to go through this. These laws created so much fear and confusion that I couldn’t get the care I needed, that would have spared me so much pain and suffering. As a result of what I went through, we have given up on trying to get pregnant.”
Then there’s Mackenzie Kulik, who started bleeding 17 weeks into her pregnancy and found out that she didn’t have enough amniotic fluid for the fetus to survive. But because of Georgia’s law, her doctors didn’t tell her just how serious the condition was. Instead, “the doctor’s advice to me was that I should stay on limited bedrest and drink as much water as possible.” And that’s what she did for three long weeks.
By twenty weeks into her pregnancy, Kulik’s amniotic fluid was basically nonexistent. It was only when she asked about termination that her doctor responded with the truth—the pregnancy was nonviable and if she didn’t have an abortion, her baby would die and Kulik herself would likely develop a dangerous infection.
“It was heartbreaking to hear this. Accepting that we would never get to meet or hold our baby girl. It was the thing I feared the most. And it was also a prognosis that I should have been told weeks earlier. Instead of giving me the science, my doctors told me to drink water. I thought back to those weeks I spent on bedrest, wracked with anxiety, hoping, and praying.”
This is what abortion bans do. They don’t just rob women of choices about medical care, but rob them of basic knowledge about their own bodies and health. You can watch Kulik’s testimony below.
Speaking of the nightmare consequences of abortion bans, let’s take a look at what’s happening in Louisiana, where abortion medication will be a controlled substance come October 1st. These drugs are often used to control hemorrhaging, but because controlled substances need to be locked away–with a specific protocol for checking them out—doctors have had to remove them from their obstetric crash carts.
To prepare, Louisiana hospitals are running timed drills, having staff practice “sprinting from patient rooms and through halls to the locked medicine closets” where abortion medication will be kept.
Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department, told the Washington Post, “I’ve seen myself what can happen when someone is bleeding out from a miscarriage…a few minutes could mean life and death.”
Most days that I write this newsletter, there is always something that sends me over the edge—today, it was this. The image of doctors practicing how long it will take them to get to the medication that will save their patients’ lives.
It’s no wonder that reproductive health providers don’t want to practice in anti-abortion states. In Missouri, where voters are hoping to restore abortion rights this November via a ballot measure, OBGYN Dr. Betsy Wickstrom tells the St. Louis Post Dispatch that doctors considering moving to the state for residencies are asking “a lot of questions” before making their decision.
“What is concerning to them is: Do I even get to learn the techniques that I would need to help someone who has an incomplete miscarriage, who is bleeding?”
Sometimes I think Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson was created in some anti-abortion lab. HuffPost uncovered a video of Robinson waving his hand in front of his crotch and saying young women need to “get this under control.” Remember, this is the same guy who said that women who have abortions weren’t responsible enough to “keep their skirts down.”
Apparently he also talked about birth control making women more “promiscuous.” I swear, North Carolina, if you elect this guy I’m going to be so mad. You can watch the video here.
Robinson also did something recently that’s become a growing trend among Republicans who are desperate to run from their anti-abortion extremism: He claimed that what he believes on abortion doesn’t matter.
Robinson said that we need to “move on” from abortion and that he doesn’t need to clarify his abortion position because “the people spoke.” (Meaning that they elected the legislators who later passed North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban.)
“It is time for us to move on, folks. We dealt with that issue. The people have spoken here in this state. My opinion on that right now matters very little, because I don’t get to make that decision. You do. Your representatives do through you, and what they decide we will sign.”
Remember, this “will of the people” language is what conservatives are relying on to distract from the fact that they’re passing abortion bans against voters wishes. It’s a pivot we’re seeing from GOP lawmakers and leaders across the country: National Republicans like Trump claim that abortion is a states’ issue, state leaders like Robinson claim that abortion is up to “the people,” and legislators work overtime to make sure that no actual voters will get to have a say on the issue. Good times!
Then there’s the messaging tactic from GOP politicians in pro-choice states like New Hampshire, where Republicans insist that abortion is already legal and they have no interest in meddling in what’s already done. (I call bullshit.)
Finally, if you ever need a good dose of hope, always look to young people. A group of Alaska teenagers protested at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau in response to Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of legislation that would expanded birth control access in the state.
Ballot Measure Updates
New polling out of Missouri shows that the majority of voters support the abortion rights amendment that will be on the ballot in November. What’s more, the poll also found that women women supported the proposed amendment 60% to 28%, and that over 60% of voters under 40 support the measure.
Those numbers have Republicans shook. I’m sure that’s why, as I reported yesterday, Sen. Josh Hawley was out and about claiming that the amendment would allow activists to secretly sterilize your kids. They know they’re losing this issue, and they’re desperate to attach it to anything else they think might do better at the polls.
Speaking of desperation, the Florida ‘fraud’ investigation into Amendment 4 signatures continues on. Despite the backlash against the clear attack on democracy, Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Amendment 4 of being “built on fraud”—referring both to the signature-gathering process and the language of the measure.
Just as they did in other states like Ohio, the Catholic church and other religious groups are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to stop Florida’s Amendment 4. The Miami Herald reports that religious institutions account for more than a third of the total contributions to the “Vote No on 4” campaign’s PAC, and that Catholic churches and organizations contributed over $800,000 to opposing the measure.
Quick hits: The Arizona Republic looks at a new poll and whether or not abortion rights being on the ballot will drive out women voters; more on the letter signed by 800 Missouri medical providers in support of the abortion rights ballot measure heading to voters next month; and ABC News with info on the ten states where abortion is on the ballot.
“But let’s be clear. If Trump wins another term, he wouldn’t even have to sign a bill from Congress; he could take sweeping executive action to eradicate abortion rights. His Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could revoke approval for medication abortion — the most common method in the U.S. He could also revive the 1873 Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion pills.”
-Susan J. Demas, Michigan Advance
In the Nation
Senate Republicans have blocked a bill to protect IVF—again! The legislation would have enacted federal protections and guaranteed insurance coverage for the fertility treatments. But despite all of Republicans’ lies about supporting IVF, all but two GOP Senators voted down the bill.
Sen. Patty Murray blasted Republicans for “posturing as pro-family while voting down this bill to help families grow, pretending to support I.V.F. while championing fetal personhood.”
Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz introduced legislation they claimed would support IVF— but it was a pure PR move. In truth, the bill would allow for all sorts of restrictions. Typical:
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