GOP Lawmaker Nearly Dies Due to Abortion Ban—Then Blames the Left

Florida’s extreme abortion ban almost killed Republican Representative and House Pro-Life Caucus co-chair Kat Cammack. But instead of using her near-death experience to shed light on her party’s bad policy, she blamed “the left” for “fearmongering” and refused to call her operation an abortion.

Cammack told The Wall Street Journal that in May of last year, when she was five weeks pregnant, doctors found that her child’s embryo grew outside of the uterus where the fallopian tube meets, a life-threatening location. “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you,” a doctor told her, adding that the embryo had no heartbeat. The emergency room doctors and nurses determined that Cammack required a shot of methotrexate to terminate her potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.  

But Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which had just been enacted, made those medical professionals hesitant to save Cammack’s life because they feared they’d lose their licenses, or even be prosecuted and sent to jail. After hours of arguments and one unsuccessful call to Governor Ron DeSantis’s office, the doctors conceded and gave Cammack the lifesaving care. Months later, Florida lawmakers clarified that doctors could act in cases such as Cammack’s because ectopic pregnancies were not abortions in their eyes. They refused to define an ectopic pregnancy.

Cammack, who is now pregnant again and due in August, is convinced that liberal rhetoric about abortion bans that are both restrictive and ambiguously worded is to blame, rather than the legislation itself. 

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” Cammack told the Journal. “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.” 

Not every pregnancy complication is black and white, and treating it as such causes medical professionals to live in fear and puts their patients at greater risk of dying.