Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Seeing Brittany Watts’ smiling face as she addressed a crowd of supporters after an Ohio grand jury refused to indict her was a striking reminder of the compounded pain of pregnancy loss and the targeted criminalization that she has endured since last fall, and there is one person to blame for facilitating her agonizing reality — Donald Trump.
Only days after being informed by her physician that her fetus’ heartbeat was not viable, Watts suffered a miscarriage at home. When she returned to the hospital for care, a nurse contacted the police. While the charges against Watts were ultimately dropped, her experience represents a traumatizing truth for women and pregnant people across the nation as anti-abortion laws criminalize and block access to basic health care in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Running parallel with Watts’ experience was Kate Cox, a mother in Texas whose fetus was diagnosed with a terminal illness. After receiving this devastating news, Cox petitioned a court for an exemption (which, in and of itself, is a harmful, heinous process) so that she could receive the critical health care that she needed. After being granted permission to have an abortion by a lower court, disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioned the state supreme court to intervene. Ultimately, Cox had to travel out of state for an abortion as her health was being compromised with each passing day that her exemption was delayed in the courts.
Of course, there’s also the ongoing legal push to restrict mifepristone, an abortion medication that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago. That case will be heard later this year by the same, conservative-stacked Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. All of this is essentially a trademark of our tragic…
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