over Texas’s abortion ban, which bans abortions in most circumstances. She was one of three women who testified on Wednesday, essentially forced to relive their harrowing pregnancy experiences in order to plead for basic reproductive care in the state.
“I had to listen to her heartbeat, simultaneously wanting to hear it and not wanting to hear it at the same time,” Zurawski testified through tears, per. Zurawski’s fertility has been permanently damaged because she was in sepsis for so long, with one of her fallopian tubes now forever closed. Another plaintiff, Ashley Brandt, testified that she learned that one of the twins she was carrying had a fatal condition called acrania. Had she not traveled to Colorado to abort the nonviable fetus, she said, the other fetus may not have survived. Although the other fetus survived, Brandt testified that traveling to obtain the abortion was, in itself, a traumatizing experience, as she feared telling doctors that she was getting a procedure that was illegal in her home state.
State attorneys seemed unphased by the arguments, reporters say; as Zurawski tearfully testified about being denied an abortion,twice, saying that her testimony was “irrelevant” and that her description of what doctors told her was “hearsay.” The womens’ stories are just a few of the likely hundreds — if not thousands — of people who are going through similarly traumatizing and life-threatening experiences due to abortion bans across the U.S. Research has found that, in