Women throughout the United States are suffering the horrific consequences of the termination of Roe v Wade. Some have died. Others are beginning to tell their stories of the physical and emotional pain inflicted on them, especially on those trying to navigate high-risk pregnancies. Georgia passed a restrictive abortion law in 2019, banning abortions after six weeks, except in special situations.

At a hearing held by U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in Atlanta on September 16, two women described their harrowing experiences under the new law. Atlanta Journal and Constitution writer Patricia Murphy wrote it up under the headline “Georgia’s abortion law left these women in shambles.” Here is a summary of her article:

Mackenzie Kulik learned early on in her pregnancy that the fetus’ multiple deformities would prevent the child from surviving. She wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but did  not qualify for an abortion  under the “fatal fetal abnormality” exception in the Georgia law. Kulik traveled to Washington, D.C., to seek a solution, but she was stymied without a Georgia doctor’s referral, which she could not get because it would have been illegal under the new GA law.

She finally ended up laying on a dirty Washington sidewalk, in too much pain to stand, waiting for an Uber to take her to the clinic. “I felt like an animal,” she said. “Like I didn’t matter, like my baby didn’t matter.”

Yasmein Ziyad, a mother of one, described worrying early in her pregnancy that she was having a miscarriage, only to be told by her doctor that she was not — and that not hearing her baby’s heartbeat at six weeks of pregnancy was not necessarily abnormal. She was sent home and told to go on bed rest.

At eight weeks, her doctor confirmed she was experiencing a miscarriage, but he could not intervene with a procedure that could be interpreted as an abortion under the law. Ziyad was prescribed medication to speed the miscarriage, but after two and a half weeks of what she called excruciating pain, her doctor eventually needed to extract more from her uterus, which he did without pain medication. “I couldn’t get the care I needed, that would have spared me so much pain and suffering,” she said. “As a result of what I went through, we have given up on hopes of ever being pregnant again,” she said.

Pro-Publica has revealed another horrific story, this one about Amber Nicole Thurman, a healthy 28-year-old Georgia citizen. In 2022, she was planning to start nursing school when she found out she was pregnant with twins. She felt she needed an abortion to preserve her plans for a more secure future for herself and her 6-year-old son, but Georgia had enacted a 6-week abortion ban, and she’d just passed the deadline.

She waited, hoping the law would be changed, but eventually she  took time off from work and borrowed a car in order to get a surgical abortion in North Carolina. Though she and her best friend woke up at 4 a.m. for the drive, heavy traffic caused her to miss her appointment. The clinic couldn’t hold Thurman’s spot, because it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect. It offered her a medication abortion instead.

Medication abortion is usually safe and effective, but in a small percentage of cases, women end up needing either another dose of misoprostol, one of the two drugs in the regimen, or surgery. That’s what happened to Thurman. Days after taking her second pill, she was in pain and bleeding heavily. The clinic in North Carolina would have offered her free follow-up care, but it was too far away.

Eventually, suffering a severe infection, she passed out and ended up in a hospital in suburban Atlanta. She needed surgery, but doctors waited 20 hours to operate as her condition worsened, and she died. A state medical review committee ruled her death “preventable.” As in other states where women have been denied routine abortion care, Georgia’s ban includes an exception for procedures “necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

But as case after case has shown, hospitals aren’t sure how to interpret this language, especially with the threat of prison time hanging over everyone involved. So medical staff sometimes hesitate to act until the threat to a woman’s life is undeniable, at which point it may be too late. As it was for Anna Nicole.

Another example: In Ireland, an otherwise healthy 31-year-old woman died of septicemia in 2012 after doctors refused to treat her for a miscarriage as long as her fetus had a heartbeat. This proved too much for even staunchly Catholic Ireland, and her case helped galvanize support for a national referendum in 2018 to make abortion legal. It passed in a landslide.

Question: How many more stories of senseless suffering before these cruel laws become politically untenable?