Part of the multitude of lies presented at this week’s Democrat National Convention in Chicago is the whole “Reproductive Health” canard. The Democrats and the Pro-Aborts have moved from “Shout Your Abortion!” to “Grieve Your Miscarriage…” and then blame it on the overturn of Roe v. Wade. That is essentially what a Louisiana woman named Kaitlyn Joshua is being used to do. Joshua’s story was first heard in 2022, when NPR interviewed her concerning her claims that she had a miscarriage but did not receive proper medical care because of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health SCOTUS decision’s effect on Louisiana abortion laws.
Joshua blames Louisiana’s strict abortion laws for her inability to receive miscarriage care. The state has several abortion bans in place; the strictest only allows abortion if the pregnant person’s life is at risk or if abortion is needed to avert “serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ.”
Joshua, who shared her story with NPR in 2022, said she was unable to get prenatal care in her first trimester of pregnancy, a change in policy she said her doctor’s office attributed to the state abortion ban.
Eleven weeks into her pregnancy, Joshua began to miscarry. But she struggled to get care; two emergency rooms turned her away, she said. The standard treatment for miscarriage is the same as for abortion, using either medication or a dilation and curettage procedure. At the time, she said, the experience deterred her and her husband from trying to become pregnant again.
In a Biden campaign ad, Joshua said the state’s abortion bans were a “direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade.”
“I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” she said on stage Monday. “No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.”
Joshua has been campaigning with first President Joe Biden, and now VP and selected Democrat nominee Kamala Harris, telling her tortured story while advocating for codifying Roe in order to once again federalize abortion rights. On Monday night, Joshua appeared on the Democrat National Convention stage, along with Amanda Zurawski of Texas, and Hadley Duvall of Kentucky. All of these states have heartbeat laws in place. Recognize the pattern? And what, exactly, does care after a miscarriage have to do with so-called “abortion care”? Absolutely nothing, but Joshua chooses to carry this lie across the country to advocate for abortion. On the one hand, Democrats are using her grief and lack of knowledge for their aims. On the other hand, Joshua is making a conscious choice to be used in this way.
Louisiana law clearly differentiates between miscarriage and elective abortion and specifically defines what each means. As a statement from Sarah Zagorski, communications director for Louisiana Right to Life, explains:
The removal of a dead unborn child or the inducement or delivery of the uterine contents in case of a positive diagnosis, certified in writing in the woman’s medical record along with the results of an obstetric ultrasound test, that the pregnancy has ended or is in the unavoidable and untreatable process of ending due to spontaneous miscarriage, also known in medical terminology as spontaneous abortion, missed abortion, inevitable abortion, incomplete abortion, or septic abortion. RS 14:87.1
A New Orleans OB-GYN through Louisiana Right to Life also responded thusly:
A New Orleans based OBGYN, Dr. Angela Parise, provided a statement regarding the protocols utilized for pregnant women since the reversal of Roe v. Wade:
As an OBGYN in New Orleans, my practice to care for mothers and babies has not changed since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I am still able to care for women in a variety of situations, including emergencies. It is unfortunate that misinformation continues to confuse the public.
I regularly see women who are pregnant well before 12 weeks gestation. There is nothing in Louisiana law that prevents doctors from seeing women prior to 12 weeks gestation.
Furthermore, I commonly treat patients suffering from the tragedy of miscarriage. Louisiana law is clear that physicians can provide miscarriage management. As doctors and medical institutions, we must love and care for these women with compassion and not abandon them to suffer alone.
But even more important is what was happening before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was even decided in 2022. While Louisiana citizens voted for Amendment 1, the “Love Life Amendment,” in 2020, it had nothing to do with how abortion would be handled in the state and everything to do with the funding of it.
In a recent op-ed in The Advocate, state senator Katrina Jackson – a pro-life democrat who wrote the amendment – wrote that it isn’t a ban on abortion and state legislators still have the ability to modify state abortion law.
“Amendment 1 will make sure judges could never establish a right to taxpayer funding of abortion in Louisiana,” she wrote. “It simply keeps abortion policy in the hands of our legislators rather than state judges.”
“Our body of pro-life laws ensure that women are empowered with the truth about their pregnancy prior to an abortion, that minors seeking an abortion have parental consent, and that babies born alive following a botched abortion receive immediate medical care.”
Then there is this 2021 missive from the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion organization:
- Louisiana is one of the most anti-abortion states in the country.
- Louisiana has a “trigger” abortion ban that would criminalize the provision of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned or if a federal constitutional amendment allows states to determine abortion law and policy.
- Louisiana banned abortions after 20 weeks in 2012, after 15 weeks in 2018, and after 6 weeks in 2019. The 15- and 6-week bans will become effective only if comparable bans in Mississippi are upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The 6-week ban includes no exceptions for rape or incest.
- As one prominent Louisiana legislator has stated, “We’ve been named the top pro-life state in America… and we do it through making it tough to get an abortion in Louisiana.”
According to Joshua, medical personnel claimed it was because of the vagueness of the Louisiana abortion laws after the June 2022 Dobbs decision that they could not adequately give her care. This is patently false, and if these providers did tell her this, then they were spreading misinformation. They may have had other reasons to refuse her care, but the Dobbs decision was not a valid excuse. They should be deemed negligent and even criminally liable, but a Supreme Court decision has nothing to do with it.
The Center for Reproductive Rights also reports that Louisiana ranks 48 among the 50 states in health outcomes of women and children, and since 2016, maternal mortality has increased 28 percent. These issues with how Louisiana deals with pregnancy are well before Roe was overturned, so, correlation does not result in causation. Far from it.
Whether Joshua is being used or just enjoying the spotlight this exposure brings is not for me to say. What can be said is that the Democrats are simply using this to try and erode and overturn pro-life laws in the states whose citizens and legislators are taking a stand for life. They want abortion on demand, without excuse, and they want total control over the medical apparatus to see this come about, and federalism gets in the way of this. They are doing the same thing with IVF in Alabama. Whatever way they can attack pro-life sanctuary states, they will do it; all under the guise of supposedly codifying Roe into federal law.
It’s a huge lie in the raft of lies heard over the last four days. As our Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar pointed out, if they were truly interested in federalization, they had 50 years to do it.
Why? Because it’s easier to foment lies, division, and divisivenes in order to achieve their ends, which ultimately is more funding. As long as they have uninformed and easily manipulable pawns who are willing to tug at people’s heartstrings, the gaslighting, the gruesomeness, and the gravy train will continue.
