Transcript

Autogenerated Transcript:

Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Graham, and members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

My name is Amanda Zurawski, and I’m here to tell you a little bit about my experience with the Texas abortion bans.

About eight months ago, I was thrilled to be cruising through the second trimester of my first pregnancy. I was carrying our daughter Willow, who had finally, blissfully been conceived after 18 months of grueling fertility treatment. My husband Josh and I were beyond thrilled.

Then, on a sunny August day, after I had just finished the invite list for the baby shower my sister was planning for me, everything changed. Some unexpected symptoms arrived, and I contacted my obstetrician to be safe and was surprised when I was told to come in as soon as possible.

After a brief examination, my husband and I received the harrowing news that I had dilated prematurely due to a condition known as cervical insufficiency. Soon after, my membranes ruptured, and we were told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable. It was clear that this was not a question of if we would lose our baby — it was a question of when.

I asked what could be done to ensure the respectful passing of our baby and to protect me now that my body was unprotected and vulnerable. I needed an abortion.

My healthcare team was anguished as they explained there was nothing they could do because of Texas’s anti-abortion laws, the latest of which had taken effect two days after my water broke. It meant that even though we would, with complete certainty, lose Willow, my doctors didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk.

I shouldn’t have had to wait in anguish for days for the inescapable ill fate that awaited, but this was August 2022 in the state of Texas, where abortion is illegal unless the pregnant person is facing a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy.

People have asked why we didn’t travel to a state where the laws aren’t so restrictive, but we live in the middle of Texas, and the nearest sanctuary state is at least an eight-hour drive. Developing sepsis, a condition that can kill in under an hour, in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert or on an airplane is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have even had to consider in the first place.

So all we could do was wait.

I cannot adequately put into words the trauma and despair that comes with waiting to either lose your own life, your child’s, or both. For days, I was locked in this bizarre and avoidable hell. Would Willow’s heart stop, or would I deteriorate to the brink of death?

The answer arrived three long days later. In a matter of minutes, I went from being physically healthy to developing a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure. My husband rushed me to the hospital, where we soon learned I was in septic shock, made evident by my violent teeth chattering and incapacity to even respond to questions.

Several hours later, after stabilizing just enough to deliver our stillborn daughter, my vitals crashed again in the middle of the night. I was rapidly transferred to the ICU, where I would stay for three days as medical professionals battled to save my life.

What I needed was an abortion a standard medical procedure. An abortion would have prevented the unnecessary harm and suffering that I endured, not only the psychological trauma that came with three days of waiting, but the physical harm my body suffered, the extent of which is still being determined.

Two things I know for sure: the preventable harm inflicted on me has already made it harder for me to get pregnant again. The barbaric restrictions that are being passed across the country are having real life implications on real people.

I may have been one of the first who was affected by the overturning of Roe in Texas, but I’m certainly not the last. More people have been and will continue to be harmed until we do something about it.

You have the power to fix this. You owe it to me and to Willow and to every other person who may become pregnant in this country to protect our right to safe and accessible healthcare emergency or no emergency.

No one should have to worry about the life of their loved ones simply because they are with child. Your job is to protect the lives of the people who elected you, not endanger them.

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.

This has gone on long enough, and it’s time now for you to do your job — your duty — and protect us.

Thank you.