On the two-year anniversary of the fall of Roe

Twenty years ago, I was graduating from the Christian private school I had attended since preschool. I regularly attended church in Winter Garden and was very active in the youth group where I met my husband.

I was staunchly “pro-life.”

Never would I have imagined I would be writing and campaigning for Congress in defense of abortion access. But since the fall of Roe v. Wade two years ago today, I, like many others, now see how politicians and judges have put women and girls dangerously at risk.

With the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe, women are no longer able to make the most crucial decisions in their lives — those involving our reproductive healthcare. We are now seeing the devastating reality caused by the denial of abortion access. Too many people have suffered through the trauma of pregnancy loss (often after years of prayers and longing to be a mother) only to have medical emergency situations made worse when physicians, who now fear criminal prosecution or loss of their medical licenses, question when or whether they can legally intervene to give care — even after a fetal heartbeat has stopped.

When I experienced a non-catastrophic uterine rupture during early labor with my daughter, Reese, my next two pregnancies became extremely high-risk, resulting in Caesarean sections at 36 weeks. During my fourth pregnancy, my OB-GYN informed me that it should be my last. After four C-sections in five years, my body would likely not survive another pregnancy. The risk to my health and life being too great, I opted for a tubal ligation with my final C-section and my husband had a vasectomy. We chose to minimize the chance that I would get pregnant again, but we also knew, and were reminded by our doctors, that nothing would be a 100 percent guarantee.

Were I to get pregnant again, I would absolutely want a say in what would happen. I would want to decide whether my children would possibly have to grow up without their mother.

Other families have to make different, but no less difficult decisions when fatal conditions or abnormalities are discovered, often well into the second trimester. I watched my two-year-old suffer and succumb to a rare fatal condition. I could never adequately convey the pain and effect that has on a mother. Women are being forced to live through the permanent trauma of carrying and then burying their child, even after they discovered early in their pregnancy, but not early enough for the ban on abortion after six weeks, that their child would never live outside of the womb, or more sadly, just for moments after birth.

Even more concerning is the continued rhetoric of some extremist politicians who believe that denying abortion access is only the first step. We are now also seeing attempts to deny the right to contraception on the grounds that some contraception acts as abortifacients. We are even seeing bills written to outlaw the incredible miracle of in vitro fertilization as politicians push personhood bills for embryos.

Simply put, decisions about whether to end a pregnancy are deeply personal and require conversations between a woman and her family and her doctor. Washington and Tallahassee politicians should have no role in family planning or reproductive healthcare decisions. Especially when they fail in nearly every way to provide necessary healthcare, support, and valuable resources to children and families.

For instance, Gov. Ron DeSantis allocated upwards of $25 million to expand the state’s Pregnancy Care Network, fake clinics that attempt to dissuade women from abortions. Then he allocated another $466,000 for a pregnancy resources website backed by anti-abortion groups. But he rejected $248 million in federal summer food benefits for Florida kids who typically receive free or reduced lunches at school. The governor also kicked tens of thousands of Florida children off of Medicaid after passage of a new federal law mandating that children 19 and younger have continuous coverage for one year after qualifying. DeSantis filed a lawsuit to avoid covering the kids. A judge dismissed his lawsuit in May.

In November, Floridians have the opportunity to stop the domino effect that's resulted since Dobbs was decided. We can vote Yes on Amendment 4 to limit government interference with abortion. The amendment states, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider...” 

We can demand that healthcare decisions remain our own choices — and not at the whim of whichever political party happens to be in power.

You may be someone, like I was, who could never imagine a situation where you would choose abortion. But then again, you don’t know what wrenching medical decisions you or someone close to you may someday have to make. But then, even if you’re never faced with this kind of health emergency, you can also be the person who believes this isn’t a decision for the government to make.

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Barbie Harden Hall is the Democratic nominee for Congressional District 11.