Women imperiled by abortion bans take center stage at the DNC

Hadley Duvall, a sexual assault survivor, speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Monday, Aug. 19, in Chicago. She appeared alongside reproductive rights advocates from states with post-Roe abortion restrictions. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Most major party leaders who took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, mentioned that Vice President Kamala Harris would work to restore federal abortion rights if elected president.

But the most poignant remarks about the issue on the DNC’s first day came from Southern women who had traumatic pregnancies and spoke about the erosion of abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade more than two years ago.

Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana, Amanda Zurawski of Texas and Hadley Duvall of Kentucky spoke at the convention on Monday night. Joshua and Zurawski were denied care for pregnancy complications in 2022. Duvall, a 22-year-old who became pregnant as a child after she was raped by her stepfather, has called for exceptions to Kentucky’s abortion ban for sexual assault survivors.

Kentucky abortion rights advocate Hadley Duvall leads Harris campaign blitz in Michigan

“At age 12, I took my first pregnancy test, and it was positive,” Duvall told the DNC crowd. “That was the first time I was ever told, ‘You have options.’ I can’t imagine not having a choice, but today, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans.”

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade during his first term as president.

Joshua spoke about being denied miscarriage treatment when she was pregnant with her second child. “Two emergency rooms sent me away. Because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying,” she said.

Appearing alongside her husband, Zurawski said delayed pregnancy care threatened her life. “Every time I share our story, my heart breaks for the baby girl we wanted so desperately, for the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver safely, for Josh who feared he’d lose me too,” she said.

All three women have campaigned in battleground states such as Florida , Michigan and Wisconsin this year for Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and President Joe Biden before he suspended his reelection bid. Like Biden, Harris has pledged to sign legislation codifying the federal right to an abortion if she’s elected and if Congress passes such a bill.

“Our daughters deserve better. America deserves better,” Joshua said.

During a campaign stop in Florida last week, she told the story of how she was 11 weeks pregnant when she drove herself to an emergency room in Baton Rouge after experiencing heavy bleeding, Florida Phoenix reported. Providers said her fetus stopped growing but sent her home and said they would pray for her. Joshua went to a different hospital after her bleeding worsened, but she was told to go home again until her pregnancy passed.

“I no longer feel safe being pregnant in Louisiana,” Joshua wrote in an opinion piece for Louisiana Illuminator this spring. “Not as a Black woman who received inadequate and delayed medical care while enduring a painful miscarriage because of my home state’s abortion ban.”

When Zurawski learned her state enacted its trigger law after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in June 2022, she was in the intensive care unit of a hospital dealing with septic shock, according to Texas Tribune. Days earlier, she found out she had premature prelabor rupture of the membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Zurawski was initially denied an abortion — her fetus had cardiac activity — until she went into sepsis.

“What I went through was nothing short of barbaric, and it did not need to happen,” Zurawski said in May while campaigning for Biden in Madison, Wisconsin. “It was completely avoidable. It was preventable.”

Zurawski is one of the plaintiffs who sued Texas last year asking for clarity on what type of medical emergency warrants abortion under the state’s bans. The state Supreme Court rejected the challenge in May, ruling that medical exceptions in the law were broad enough, the Tribune reported.

While Joshua and Zurawski have often traveled together in swing states to share their stories of denied care in a post-Roe United States, Duvall rose to prominence after she appeared in an ad for Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign last year.

Duvall, who miscarried a pregnancy resulting from assault, criticized Beshear’s opponent and former Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron for his lack of support for adding rape and incest exceptions to the state’s ban, Kentucky Lantern reported. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable,” she said.

She has since become a reproductive rights advocate and hit the campaign trail for national Democrats, appearing alongside Harris on MSNBC in June and in an ad for Biden last month.

“There are other survivors out there who have no options,” Duvall said Monday before introducing Beshear’s DNC speech. “And I want you to know that we see you. We hear you.”