For two weeks, I carried a lost pregnancy and the torment that comes with it.
I never went into labor on my own.
>> Representative Lucy McBath sharing the story of her miscarriage during
the House Judiciary committee hearing on abortion access.
She explains why protecting women's reproductive rights is so
incredibly important.
Let's watch more.
>> When my doctor finally induced me,
I faced the pain of labor without hope for a living child.
This is my story.
It's uniquely my story and yet it's not so unique.
>> Later in her speech, Representative McBath discusses how certain
proposed legislation on a state level would actually make her a criminal,
if she had an abortion to avoid giving birth to a stillborn.
So when she was sharing her story,
she was specifically talking about how she had already miscarried,
she didn't have a healthy pregnancy and she was carrying that fetus for two weeks.
And there are abortion procedures provided to women to
essentially abort that fetus that is no longer alive.
So, you don't have to go through the trauma of giving birth to a stillborn.
And I think it's really important to understand, look, I wanna make it clear,
I don't think that this is a story meant to say, well, no,
we need to make some exceptions for some women.
To me it's important to understand that these are deeply private,
deeply personal decisions that should be made,
that should be determined between a woman and her doctor.
Think about how degrading it is to have to essentially just sit back and
allow these politicians who don't know you, they don't know your circumstances,
to make a decision about whether or not, you should be allowed to get an abortion.
It shouldn't be up to them.
And she made that case later on in her speech, I think she's absolutely right.
>> So, I've known several women who are in a similar situation.
So, whether it's a zygote or fetus,
that it's not going to come like they want a pregnancy,
they want a child, but they're not gonna be born alive, okay?
So they're outlawing those exact drugs that would actually helped
them induce the miscarriage, so they can move on with their lives.
And so what they're saying, and it would have applied to my friends,
they're saying, no, carry it inside you until you have a natural miscarriage.
That's your goddamn problem.
That's unbelievable.
>> And I'll give you the specific examples of state legislation in just a moment.
But I do wanna go to the second part of her speech just briefly, because I thought
it was powerful, and it takes courage to share what she has gone through.
And also to represent what so many women are going through throughout the country,
let's watch.
>> After which failed pregnancy should I have been imprisoned?
Would it have been after the first miscarriage?
After doctors used what would be an illegal drug to abort the loss fetus?
Would you have put me in jail after the second miscarriage?
Perhaps that would have been the time forced to reflect in confinement at
the guilt I felt, the guilt that so many women feel after losing their pregnancies.
Or would you have put me behind bars after my stillbirth?
After I was forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks,
after asking God if I was ever gonna be able to raise a child.
And I asked because the same medicine used to treat my failed pregnancies
is the same medicine states like Texas would make illegal.
I ask because if Alabama makes abortion murder,
does it make miscarriage manslaughter?
>> And I wanna note that in some cases in red states,
miscarriage has already been treated as if it's homicide or murder.
I'm not even kidding.
Some red states already have laws on the books that immediately drug
test a woman after she miscarries to see if she's ever taken or
has any type of drug in her system that could have led to that miscarriage.
And there have been cases of women who have been arrested and
prosecuted for murder as a result of that.
Now, some of you might say, well, I mean, if she's pregnant, she's taking drugs.
Well, she's terrible, there should be consequences.
But if you have a system in place that's that punitive toward women
who might have a drug addiction, for instance, what does that do?
It discourages them from seeking help to get rehabilitation,
so they can have a healthy pregnancy.
But it doesn't matter that this whole debate,
as I've said a million times before, is not about saving lives.
It's not about helping new mothers have an easier time being mothers.
It's not about keeping viable children healthy and safe.
It's all about control.
And I'll give you the details about that Texas law that she's referring to
in just a moment.
Cenk, thoughts on the video.
>> Yeah, so real quick guys.
The other problem with the making miscarriages illegal,
if you do drugs etc, then they say, okay, how about alcohol?
Did you ever drink wine, cigarettes?
Well, what kinda food did you eat?
What kind of did you fall or was it your fault that you felt, okay?
Now we're judging women on everything.
The minute the pregnancy begins, they say, you're now property of the state, okay?
And you will be judged harshly and your life doesn't matter anymore.
Your liberty doesn't matter anymore.
The only thing that matters is the zygote and
your body is the property of the government.
I mean, if anything was the jack booted thugs of big government,
it would be people telling women what to do with their bodies and
then imprisoning them if they don't follow those strict guidelines.
>> You know, it's interesting because where do you draw the line?
I mean, when you think about it, there are so
many foods that a pregnant woman is not supposed to eat,
that she's advised to stay away from like sushi for instance, or even deli meat,
which I found out fairly recently from my sister in law and I found that shocking.
But yeah, I mean, pregnant women are advised to not eat anything other than
rabbit food and like whatever, sounds like a terrible, terrible time.
But nonetheless, if a pregnant woman decides, well, what would it hurt?
Let me have a sushi dinner and then later on,
it turns out that she has a miscarriage.
Is she gonna be prosecuted in some of these red states?
I mean, who knows?
That's how crazy the environment is right now, in regard to this issue.
And she referenced Texas in her video.
So, or in her speech.
So, let me give you the details on that.
One Texas law passed last year lists several medications as abortion
inducing drugs and largely bars their use for
abortion after the seventh week of pregnancy.
But two of those drugs, misoprostol and mifepristone,
are the only drugs recommended in the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologist guidelines for treating a new patient after an early pregnancy loss.
By the way, again, this is not an argument to like fight for a carve out to
be able to use these drugs specifically in the case of a woman miscarrying.
This is to highlight how abortion is not just about ending a pregnancy.
It's about health care for women, it's about women being able to make that
choice for themselves along with advice from their own doctors.
And remember Cenk, when we were covering the Affordable Care Act,
before it had passed, as the debates were going on,
what was the argument that Republicans made over and over again?
That government getting involved in health care would mean that they would get
in between you and your doctor.
>> 100% every time.
What is this?
I mean, it is inarguably getting between you and your doctor.
Now the right wing as usual, every one of them hypocrites.
None of them care about logical facts, are like yeah,
the government should get between you and your doctor.
Of course, that's what the government should do.
The government should also get inside your uterus.
And by the way, freedom, we were just kidding,
you shouldn't have any freedom at all.
The government should control your body.
They're a joke, there an international joke.
Look, what's not funny is what they're doing to these poor women and what they're
gonna do all across the country when that decision actually gets handed down.
Oklahoma now passing a new more draconian anti-abortion law because they think
the Supreme Court is going to allow it.
And so it's getting worse and worse every day.
One of our members wrote in, I'll give him credit, Kabuki dragon, and said look,
the point is the trauma, it's not like, they accidentally traumatized women.
No, the idea is that we showed you a hundred times about how they don't
care about babies,
including in today's show, there's a baby food shortage supply problem.
And they go, yeah, I don't care.
No, nine of them voted no on everything.
Most of the Republican Party voted no on another bill that would help.
They are criticizing the Biden administration for
sending it to detention centers where women can't leave if
they don't have the formula, their babies are literally gonna die.
They don't care about the babies.
They separate the babies from their moms.
They never cared about the babies.
It's all about controlling women.
And that's why you're like, wait miscarriages.
How do we get the miscarriages?
Because it isn't about abortion.
Look, the bible's proabortion Numbers 5:11 through 31.
Read it, read it for yourself.
It is very clear that God does abortions if he thinks the woman
cheated on their husbands.
Okay, and the priest is the one that actually carries out the abortion.
So it has nothing to do with religion or any of those things.
It has only one purpose.
We want, we are in charge of white Christian right wing men and
we wanna control women.
That's what this is about