In May 2024, Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at the emergency room and learned her life was in danger. She needed the same reproductive healthcare that she had worked with colleagues to deny other women through Florida’s six-week abortion ban. And here’s the kicker: She blames “The Left.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that Cammack needed to be injected with a shot of methotrexate, and she told the outlet that doctors and nurses who saw her said they were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they gave her drugs to end her pregnancy.
We’ve seen this happen over and over again ever since the right, with Trump at the helm, began attacking women’s rights to health care.
On the 31st, Cammack said a doctor found the embryo implanted where the fallopian tube meets the uterus, which is considered a cornual ectopic pregnancy. “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you,” he told her.
That’s when Cammack decided she needed the shot of methotrexate, which blocks folic acid needed by the embryo to grow.
“What happens to women who don’t have a car?” she asked. “What happens to the women who don’t have their doctor’s cellphone number? Hell—do they have a doctor? What happens to them?”
She told the outlet that she wants other women who have an ectopic pregnancy to have hope, saying, “You start having some, you know, soul-searching moments of, ‘Can I get pregnant again?’ ”
With tears, she said, “And you can.”
That’s sweet, but Commak opposes abortion, except in cases or rape or incest or if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger, and co-chairs the House pro-life caucus.
Commack found herself having to pull up the letter of the law on her phone to argue the case and even call Governor Ron DeSantis. She couldn’t reach the Florida Governor, but staff assisted her.
Other women who are caught in Florida’s draconian abortion ban can’t do that, but she did.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
Cammack doesn’t fault the Florida law for her experience. Instead, she accuses the left of scaring medical professionals with messaging that stressed that they could face criminal charges for violating the law. She said she feels those efforts gave medical staff reason to fear giving drugs even under legal circumstances.
“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” she said. She also knows that abortion-rights advocates might see the opposite—that the Republican-led restriction caused the confusion. “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she said. Cammack declined to name the hospital where she received care.
Dr. Alison Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, disagrees with Cammack, saying that doctors in states that have restricted abortion access worry “whether their clinical judgment will stand should there be any prosecution.”
Haddock explained that early pregnancy care, including instances of ectopic pregnancies, is a “medically complicated space” where uncertainty in diagnoses and treatment plans is common. “This has been a real stress point for a lot of our physicians,” she told the Journal.
Yeah, but sure, lady, blame “The Left” for the monster you helped to create for women in this country.
She said, “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.” However, there are approximately 15,537 to 30,000 ectopic pregnancies annually in the US, resulting in about 1.5 million to 3 million abortions. She should consider herself lucky.
Cammack is expecting again, according to a post on the Bad App. I’m sure she’s got DeSantis on speed dial in case anything goes wrong. The women with no car or who don’t have their doctor’s cellphone number handy, whom she is so worried about, don’t have connections like speed dialing their Governor.
