On the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, Kaitlyn Joshua, a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was one of three women who walked onto the main stage at the United Center and described for the country how she almost lost her life to a miscarriage in 2022. She was getting ready for her daughter’s “fourth birthday party,” she said, when something didn’t feel right. “Two emergency rooms sent me away because of Louisiana’s abortion ban.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, demonstrating that Republicans are terrified of the consequences of their abortion bans being known, essentially called Joshua a liar.
Joshua continued: “No one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much that my husband feared for my life. 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 and are scared to tell anyone. Even their doctors. Our daughters deserve better. America deserves better.”
Joshua’s story warrants our sympathy, and our outrage, but in response, Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, demonstrating that Republicans are terrified of the consequences of their abortion bans being known, essentially called Joshua a liar. In a post that same night on X, Murrill wrote, “Once again, the Democrats have their facts wrong. There is nothing in our bipartisan law that prohibits emergency care for someone having a miscarriage or any emergency situation during pregnancy. Nothing. Hard stop.”
In a second post, Murrill wrote that “doctors are legally required to care for a pregnant woman who suffers an emergent health crisis, whether that’s appendicitis or a miscarriage.”
No matter what Murrill wants the world to believe, the truth is Joshua suffered because of the abortion ban that went into effect in Louisiana after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
It’s not at all surprising to hear Joshua say two Louisiana hospitals refused to treat her. In fact, it’s predictable. Doctors and hospital officials across Louisiana have repeatedly confirmed that our vague laws on this “life of the mother” exception are causing dangerous problems, and medical officials are afraid of providing care for a woman having a miscarriage and then being arrested and charged. The law requires a person to essentially be on her deathbed before allowing the exception.
Those doctors should be afraid. In June 2022, five days after the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn Roe, Murrill, then a chief deputy to Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, drafted a letter for Landry that he sent the Louisiana State Medical Society. A physician who performed an “elective” abortion, that Murrill/Landry letter said, would risk their “liberty and medical license.” They said that! It’s telling that instead of clarifying the new law, they threatened to arrest doctors and end their careers.
After Murrill essentially accused Joshua of lying on X, the Louisiana Right to Life also posted to bring attention to the state’s “life of the mother” exception and wrote, “Ultimately, the fault for the substandard treatment lies with the practitioners that managed her case.” That post accused the DNC of “utilizing a tragic story to elicit confusion and disapproval for pro-life laws.” One wonders if Murrill would prosecute a physician who did not terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s life was in danger. Is the worth of a woman’s life now to be decided by politicians?
What women like Joshua know, and what Murrill and the Louisiana Right to Life don’t want to admit, is that we have unusable laws, drafted purposely to prevent any abortion, for any reason. Hospitals and doctors are terrified of arrest, so they err on the side of virtually no treatment for miscarriage and complications. So many women have come forward with their painful stories. The Department of Health has publicly referred questions on abortion to Murrill, the highest ranking prosecutor in the state. Those are the facts.
A lot has already been said about Right to Life's disingenuous spin about Kaitlyn's experience, but I am still shaking mad.
— chris kaiser (@chris__kaiser) August 24, 2024
With full knowledge of the risks Louisiana's abortion ban poses to patients, RTL has vehemently opposed every attempt—by Rs and Ds—to clarify the law. https://t.co/8jc2Bgaf40
If the powerful in the state cared about women’s lives, then they’d pass a law to clarify the exceptions related to health and life of the mother and a nonviable fetus. (Soon after the ban went into effect, Nancy Davis, another Baton Rouge woman, found out her fetus was developing without a skull, and had to travel to New York for an abortion because she couldn’t get care in Louisiana.) Yet every time legislators have tried to do this, Louisiana Right to Life, which is politically powerful, has crushed those efforts. They think that women and doctors lie. It’s easier to punish someone when the law is vague.
This demeaning treatment of women is not new, and it certainly is bipartisan. Former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and his wife ran hard on a campaign of “life,” judging and punishing women who choose to terminate a pregnancy. Edwards signed every abortion-related law that landed on his desk. He signed the 2022 trigger ban, even though it would have become law without his signature, that did not include a rape and incest exception that he claimed he supported. He noted in an interview that prior to Roe being overturned, the abortion debate in the Louisiana legislature was “largely an academic exercise,” meaning the cruelty it would inflict upon women was only theoretical and something officials could never be held accountable for.
But now we’re seeing those consequences play out in real life.
Louisiana is often described as “last in everything.” Maybe it’s because we treat women — some women — as expendable, political pawns.
Dragging Kaitlyn Joshua in the media for telling her truth is how the attorney general, Landry’s administration and Louisiana Right to Life think they can defend the indefensible.
In response to Louisiana Right to Life’s social media thread blaming the hospitals Joshua visited — and not Louisiana law — for her suffering, Joshua responded, “They are scared y’all. Instead of Right to Life using their platform to amplify the issues around the same ban they endorsed, that is STILL comprising basic maternal care in our state, instead of owning the harm they caused and the confusion they created, they do this!!!”
They are scared. They’re scared of the public knowing that this is what total abortion bans mean, and scared of Joshua telling women: what happened to me could happen to you.
