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Woman Denied Emergency Abortion Called a Senator for Help. He Sent Her to an Anti-Abortion Clinic
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Laura Bassett
@LEBassett
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A Missouri woman whose water broke at 17 weeks, whose fetus was dying inside of her and threatening her life, was denied an abortion. She called a GOP state senator to beg for help getting around the law, and he sent her to an anti-abortion center.
jezebel.com
Missouri Woman Denied Emergency Abortion Called a State Senator for Help. He Sent Her to an...
Mylissa Farmer's water broke 17 weeks into her pregnancy and the fetus was dying inside her, but she couldn't legally get an abortion in the state.
9:18 AM · Oct 18, 2022
Laura Bassett
@LEBassett
·
Follow
A Missouri woman whose water broke at 17 weeks, whose fetus was dying inside of her and threatening her life, was denied an abortion. She called a GOP state senator to beg for help getting around the law, and he sent her to an anti-abortion center.
jezebel.com
Missouri Woman Denied Emergency Abortion Called a State Senator for Help. He Sent Her to an...
Mylissa Farmer's water broke 17 weeks into her pregnancy and the fetus was dying inside her, but she couldn't legally get an abortion in the state.
9:18 AM · Oct 18, 2022
https://jezebel.com/missouri-woman-denied-emergency-abortion-called-a-state-1849672223
In August, a pregnant Missouri woman named Mylissa Farmer suddenly needed an abortion, just over a month after her state enacted its near-total abortion ban. Her water had broken 17 weeks into her pregnancy, and her medical records indicated a number of health factors placing her at greater risk of pregnancy-related complications, including increased risk of sepsis, loss of her uterus, and even death. Farmer is also 41-years-old. Doctors treating her recommended an abortion, but, of course, couldn’t provide her one under state law, reported the Springfield News-Leader.
Farmer and her partner consulted with doctors and experts across several states and made “countless phone calls,” with—in her words—“a baby dying inside me.” They learned there was no way for their wanted pregnancy to be viable or even last another six weeks, since Farmer’s cervix was already open. If she waited it out, she and the fetus could suffer tremendously. “The thing [a doctor] said was, ‘There are things worse than death, and I have seen it,’” Farmer recounted.
Farmer told the newspaper she’s always identified as “pretty pro-life”—but she found herself seeking abortion care, anyway, even calling her state senator’s office to seek help. She didn’t find it.
Her state senator, a Republican named Bill White, told her the state ban that was literally jeopardizing her life was actually “designed to protect the woman’s life.” Farmer recalled telling White, “It’s not protecting me.… There’s no chance for a baby; she’s not going to make it. It’s putting my life in danger.” She continued, “I’m 41, it’s not something I can recover from quickly. I could lose my uterus, there’s a lot of things that could happen. We just want to move on, we just want to grieve.” White promised he’d talk to the state’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt on her behalf and then connected Farmer with an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center in the state. Farmer never heard from him again.
*snip*
38 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
TX AG Ken Paxton’s comment on the children slaughtered in Uvalde. 
Just go to a faith healer and you'll be fine! 
Republicans consider us second-class "citizens" - who are nothing more than objects for ownership.
all those other people are the problem.
I always find your posts to be clear-sighted and thoughtful. 
Any time! 
I've posted about this myself. In fact, here's what I posted a few days ago in an abortion-related thread here at DU:
Most contemporary Americans do not take the risks of pregnancy and childbirth anywhere near as seriously as they should.
There was a time when giving birth was a total crapshoot, and everyone knew it. For most of human history, no woman who got pregnant was able to take it for granted that either she or the baby would survive the birth, much less both survive and go on to live healthy lives. The dangers were, of course, greatest for poor women, but no one was exempt. (Case in point: Princess Charlotte of Wales, whose father would later become King George IV, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Charlotte_of_Wales_%281796%E2%80%931817%29?wprov=sfla1)
Modern medicine has now progressed to the point where, with proper medical care, few women die as a result of childbirth and pregnancy, and even babies who are quite premature can often be enabled to survive. This has lulled far too many people into assuming that those risks have been eliminated altogether, which has led to uninformed lawmakers enacting abortion bans that are predicated on the misconception (pun intended) that having babies is a "perfectly safe," routine activity which poses few, if any, risks to either mother or child.
These lawmakers see no need to provide exemptions for risks that they regard as non-existent, and they are both shocked and skeptical when anyone tries to point out situations where saving a woman's life literally depends on terminating the pregnancy she carries.
People who have never entertained the notion that an abortion might ever be necessary to protect a pregnant person's health, much less prevent them from dying, often have a very hard time grasping the fact that this can and does happen, much more often than they ever imagined possible. And so, as the saying goes, here we are.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217256442#post37
There was a time when giving birth was a total crapshoot, and everyone knew it. For most of human history, no woman who got pregnant was able to take it for granted that either she or the baby would survive the birth, much less both survive and go on to live healthy lives. The dangers were, of course, greatest for poor women, but no one was exempt. (Case in point: Princess Charlotte of Wales, whose father would later become King George IV, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Charlotte_of_Wales_%281796%E2%80%931817%29?wprov=sfla1)
Modern medicine has now progressed to the point where, with proper medical care, few women die as a result of childbirth and pregnancy, and even babies who are quite premature can often be enabled to survive. This has lulled far too many people into assuming that those risks have been eliminated altogether, which has led to uninformed lawmakers enacting abortion bans that are predicated on the misconception (pun intended) that having babies is a "perfectly safe," routine activity which poses few, if any, risks to either mother or child.
These lawmakers see no need to provide exemptions for risks that they regard as non-existent, and they are both shocked and skeptical when anyone tries to point out situations where saving a woman's life literally depends on terminating the pregnancy she carries.
People who have never entertained the notion that an abortion might ever be necessary to protect a pregnant person's health, much less prevent them from dying, often have a very hard time grasping the fact that this can and does happen, much more often than they ever imagined possible. And so, as the saying goes, here we are.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217256442#post37
