Health
26 min read

She faced a life-threatening miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ abortion ban, even calls to the governor’s office didn’t help

By Kavitha Surana, ProPublica
3 hr ago


Emily Waldorf (Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive its biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

On the morning of Sept. 16, 2024, Emily Waldorf’s preschooler found her curled on the bathroom floor. Waldorf had felt a strange pressure during a shower, like a balloon bulging into her vagina, and was now bleeding. “I can be your pillow, mommy,” her daughter said, nuzzling into her neck.

Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant. She and her husband, Justin, dropped their daughter off at her grandparents’ and rushed to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Waldorf worked as an acute care physical therapist. ... In a dark room, a doctor pointed to an hourglass shape glowing on the ultrasound screen: There was her amniotic sac, funneling into her dilated cervix, and there was their tiny daughter’s foot, dipping out. ... “Your body is about to miscarry,” the doctor said.

Three doctors gathered and told the couple that the longer Waldorf’s cervix remained open and her uterus exposed to bacteria, the higher her risk of developing a life-threatening infection. The standard of care, they explained, would be to quickly empty her womb.

But they couldn’t do that, one doctor said apologetically, sighing deeply. The baby still had a detectable heartbeat, and stopping it would run afoul of a state abortion ban that snapped into place after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022; violations carried penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and 10 years in prison. They needed to wait until Waldorf went into labor on her own or showed signs of a dangerous infection, or until the fetal heartbeat ended. ... “Our hands are tied behind our backs,” Dr. Erin Large later told her, according to a journal Waldorf began keeping on her phone and shared with ProPublica. “Tell your friends to vote differently.”

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