Trigger Warning – Mention of Pregnancy
One of the things that supposedly pro-life people have never understood, is that miscarriage is medically known as a spontaneous abortion. When a fetus stops developing, your body is supposed to take care of things itself. But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes you need medical intervention to complete the miscarriage.
And this form of medical intervention is also known as abortion.
Before Roe v. Wade, late actress Debbie Reynolds found herself in this tragic situation.
But because abortion was illegal, she was forced to carry a pregnancy that had already ended while she jumped through numerous hoops to get the care she needed before she became septic.
Way back in 1989, in a recently resurfaced interview with Joan Rivers, Reynolds spoke about her harrowing experiences with miscarriage.
“I had Carrie and Todd [Fisher] and I wanted to have two other children. I got pregnant, I was very lucky, in that sense, right away,” she shared of growing her family with husband Eddie Fisher. “I was pregnant seven months and the baby died inside of me but I didn’t know it. It just sorta shrunk down a little bit.
And in those days, there were no abortions allowed, whether you were ill, whether you were raped, whether the child died, which is disgusting to think there is those laws.”
The Singin’ in the Rain star revealed that she was told she had to carry the baby “full-term.”
“That was the law. It didn’t matter,” she explained. “It had to abort itself — it could not be taken from me. It’s insane to think that could be.”
She said the experience was especially painful because she still looked visibly pregnant and people would ask her, “‘How’s the baby? What name are you going to name the baby?’ “
From People
People with privilege will always have access to abortions, but that doesn’t protect them from the trauma of having to fight to access healthcare options that will save your life.
And the people without the privilege of being able to take off work, find childcare, arrange transportation, and afford the two-part procedure?
They will die alone in closets.
And if they survive? They’ll be at risk of prosecution.
Legal access to abortion care is about so much more than ending an unwanted pregnancy.