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Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) opened up about her life-threatening experience with an ectopic pregnancy last year amid her state’s six-week abortion ban, which left health professionals in fear of prosecution for delivering reproductive care.
Cammack detailed her life-threatening experience with the Wall Street Journal in an interview published over the weekend. She said she learned about her ectopic pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, in May last year. She was five weeks pregnant and had woken up with heavy bleeding.
AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib
Ectopic pregnancies are nonviable and life-threatening. Cammack told WSJ she refused surgery to remove the embryo, and instead asked for methotrexate, a drug that can stop the embryo’s growth and dissolve existing cells.
However, doctors and nurses were hesitant to give her the medication out of fear of losing their license or worse, facing criminal charges amid the six-week abortion ban that had taken effect that month.
Cammack pulled up the state law on her phone for hospital workers to read, and tried calling Gov. Ron Desantis’ (R) office for help, but her calls were unanswered. She eventually received methotrexate hours after arguing her case.
Florida’s abortion ban has exceptions for the life of the pregnant person, and it allows for the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. However, lifesaving care has nevertheless been delayed or denied altogether to some Florida women under its law, and medical professionals have expressed concern about the law being unclear.
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Cammack, who opposes abortion, blamed the wariness of her doctors on the left, not on the abortion ban. She told the WSJ that the left’s messaging around the law had made health care workers paranoid about criminal penalties.
“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” she said.
Cammack is pregnant again and due in mid-August.
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