A Louisiana woman who struggled to get medical care due to the state’s strict abortion ban spoke in support of Kamala Harris Monday on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.
Kaitlyn Joshua was one of three women who took the stage to share how they were affected by abortion bans in post-Roe America. She recounted being turned away from two Louisiana hospitals while she was bleeding from a miscarriage.
“Two emergency rooms sent me away because of Louisiana's abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much. My husband feared for my life,” Joshua told the convention. “No woman should experience what I endured. But too many have. They write to me, saying, ‘What happened to you?’ Happened to me? Sometimes they're miscarrying scared to tell anyone, even their doctors. Our daughters deserve better. America deserves better.”
Joshua first shared her story in an interview with WWNO’s Rosemary Westwood in 2022 after the state’s near-total ban took effect.
She said that due to the ban, she was told to wait to schedule her first prenatal appointment for when she was 12 weeks pregnant, instead of the typical six to 12 weeks.
"They specifically said, 'We now no longer see women until they're at least 12 weeks,'" Joshua recalled. "And I said, 'Oh Lord. Is this because of what I think? And they said, 'Yes.'"
At around 10 weeks pregnant, Johnson started experiencing troubling symptoms like bleeding and labor-like pains. She went to two separate ERs, but was turned away both times and ultimately denied a dilatation and curettage (D&C), a procedure that aids a miscarriage, or misoprostol, a medication used to treat miscarriages.
Some doctors in Louisiana have been reluctant to treat miscarriages out of fear of breaking the law, since the medication and procedures used for miscarriages can be identical to those used for abortions.
"I think physicians are scared, and so what can we do to decrease our risk that the attorney general is going to come after us?" said Dr. Neelima Sukhavasi, a Baton Rouge OB-GYN. "And that is probably one of the things that they saw would be easiest."
Another woman, Amanda Zurawski, along with her husband, Josh Zurawski, described how she almost died from pregnancy complications after she was denied an abortion in Texas.
“Every time I share our story, my heart breaks,” Amanda Zurawski told the convention. “For the baby girl we wanted desperately, for the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely, and for Josh who feared he would lose me too.”
Hadley Duvall from Kentucky was raped by her stepfather at the age of 12, and became pregnant with his child. She ultimately miscarried, but wanted to share how the abortion bans are affecting survivors of sexual assault, and advocate for reproductive rights.
“I can’t imagine not having choice. But today, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” Duvall said. “He calls it a beautiful thing. What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”
