Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack has revealed that she almost died last year as a result of her state’s six-week abortion banwhich left hospital staff reluctant to treat her ectopic pregnancy for fear of criminal prosecution.
Speaking to The Wall Street JournalCammack, 37, reported her experiences in an unnamed Florida hospital’s emergency room on May 31 2024 when it was discovered that there was no way for her baby’s embryo to survive and that her own life was in danger without action.
A doctor discovered the embryo implanted where the fallopian tube meets the uterus, a cornual ectopic pregnancy, and frankly told the representative: “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you.”
Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack (Getty)
But after deciding against surgery, the facility’s doctors and nurses had to be persuaded to give her the shot of methotrexate she required to expel the pregnancy.
That was because the state’s six-week ban had come into effect at the start of that month, causing staff to fear they could lose their medical licenses and be sent to jail if they gave her the drug, which blocks the flow of folic acid to the embryo to prevent its growth.
Cammack was only five weeks pregnant at the time, the embryo had no heartbeat and her own safety was in jeopardy, but nevertheless the congresswoman found herself forced to pull up the letter of the law on her phone to argue the case and even put in a call to Governor Ron desantiswithout being able to reach him, before staff relented and came to her aid.
Florida regulators have since issued new guidelines to clarify the situation and Cammack, who is pro-life and opposes abortion except in case of rape and incest or when the mother’s life is at risk, is pregnant again and due in August.
But surprisingly, given her ordeal, the representative does not feel the law itself is at fault and instead blames Democrats for scaring medical professionals into confusion over their responsibilities.
“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” Cammack told the Journal while acknowledging that reproductive rights activists might draw the opposite conclusion from her story.
“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 also conceded that the heated political atmosphere surrounding the issue in recent years has not served to put the best interests of expectant mothers first.
Cammack speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill (AFP/Getty)
“I would stand with any woman – Republican or Democrat – and fight for them to be able to get care in a situation where they are experiencing a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy,” she said.
“We have turned the conversation about women’s healthcare into two camps: pink hats and pink ribbons. It’s either breast cancer or abortion.”
She said it was vital that women lead the debate on reproductive rights among House Republicans because men outnumber them six to one within their caucus, also reporting that one of her male colleagues “almost sunk under the table” when she mentioned breastfeeding in a recent conversation.
Dr. Alison Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the Journal it is becoming common for doctors in states that have restricted abortion access to worry “whether their clinical judgment will stand should there be any prosecution.”
“This has been a real stress point for a lot of our physicians,” she said.
Molly Duane, a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rightstook issue with Cammack’s argument that pro-choice activists were to blame for sowing confusion, pointing out that Florida’s regulators had made it clear they intended to aggressively enforce their six-week ban while also failing to define ectopic pregnancy within the legislation.
