Plaintiff in Center’s Case Against Texas to Testify at the U.S. Senate April 26

Amanda Zurawski, lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. State of Texas, will be testifying about her experience with Texas abortion bans before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on April 26.

The Committee hearing, titled “The Assault on Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America,” will begin at 10:00 a.m. Watch the livestream of the hearing here.

Zurawski (shown left), from Austin, was denied abortion care after she experienced preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Three days later, she was diagnosed with sepsis, a life-threatening condition. The doctors then performed an emergency abortion, but Zurawski spent the next three days in the ICU fighting for her life. Although she survived, the infection caused one of her fallopian tubes to become permanently closed, compromising her future ability to have children.

At the Committee hearing, Zurawski will appeal to lawmakers to put a stop to abortion bans like Texas’s—“barbaric restrictions that are being passed across the country” and are “having real life implications on real people.”

“Being pregnant is difficult and complicated enough. We do not need you to make it even more terrifying and, frankly, downright dangerous to create life in this country,” says Zurawski. “This has gone on long enough, and it’s time now for you to do your job—your duty—and protect us.”

• U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, “The Assault on Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America”
• Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2023
• Time: 10:00am
• Location: Hart Senate Office Building Room 216
• Presiding: Chair Durbin
• Watch the livestream here.

Image credit: ©Rick Kern/Getty Images for the Center for Reproductive Rights