What ‘choice’ does the woman have?

What choice? When a couple deeply desires and joyfully celebrates a pregnancy, what happens when the woman’s body rejects that pregnancy?

A woman who experiences an ectopic pregnancy or early term incomplete miscarriage has no choice. There is no baby to be saved. The only life to be saved is that of the woman whose body can’t sustain the pregnancy.

When this occurs in a state with an abortion ban, the unthinkable unfolds. Imagine that you or your loved one arrives at a clinic, emotionally distressed, bleeding and in severe pain. You’re told to leave and handle it on your own until you’re closer to death.

This inhumanity is happening because of ‘pro-life’ abortion bans. What is pro-life about withholding medical care and endangering the life of a woman who has lost a pregnancy? What is pro-life about delaying treatment and robbing that woman of the ability to conceive in the future?

Abortion bans go beyond choice. They torture women who lose a pregnancy through no choice of their own – approximately one million in the US annually.

Who would criminalize a patient who seeks and a physician who provides basic medical care? The people we elected mandated this brutality. Elections have consequences.

Bonnie Boothroy

Iowa City