Two Women Bonded Over Miscarriages, One Almost Died After Being Turned Away By Florida Doctors As Result of 15-Week Abortion Ban

Lives are at stake under the new abortion laws.

Two Florida women, Anya Cook and Shanae Smith-Cunningham, both suffered miscarriages and were reportedly denied medical care as a result of the state’s 15-week abortion ban, which almost resulted in the death of one of the pregnant women.

According to The Washington Post, the two women, who bonded over their pregnancy complications, both experienced preterm pre-labor rupture of the membranes (PPROM). Cook and Smith-Cunningham were 16 and 19 weeks pregnant when they sought medical care in December, weeks before doctors considered their fetuses to have reasonable chances of survival.

Cook visited a Coral Springs hospital after experiencing the loss of amniotic fluid. Doctors never offered the woman the options of labor induction or surgical abortion. After being given antibiotics and directions to wait at home for her condition to progress, Cook ended up delivering her 16-week-old fetus in the bathroom of a nail salon. She began hemorrhaging, losing nearly half the blood in her body.

Smith-Cunningham developed PPROM after her friend, and was sent home by Florida doctors who refused to provide care unless her cervix dilated further, or she began experiencing an active miscarriage.

“They are playing with people’s lives with this law,” Smith-Cunningham said.

Cook was rushed to the hospital a second time and given a treatment that reportedly presented complications with the possible difficulty of carrying a pregnancy to term.

“Florida’s 15-week abortion ban brutally tortured two friends, one to the brink of death,” Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern wrote on Twitter. “Because Florida law allows emergency abortions only in the most extreme and dire circumstances, patients who are not yet on the brink of death are encouraged to undergo hysterectomies instead. In what world is that pro-life?”

This is one of the most devastating—and important—articles I have ever read: A @CAKitchener report about how Florida's 15-week abortion ban brutally tortured two friends, one to the brink of death. It is difficult to get through. But I urge you to read it. https://t.co/PIEyhjT7Lc pic.twitter.com/EYBxQqnr5O

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) April 10, 2023

Common Dreams reported that Republicans are working towards more extreme restrictions, proposing a six-week abortion ban.

State Sen. Lauren Book (D-32), representative for both Smith-Cunningham and Cook, said things will worsen for women who “will die” if the six-week ban passes. “Despite denials from across the aisle, the truth is clear,” Book said. “Florida mothers who suffer miscarriages are ALREADY being forced to the brink of death before receiving needed abortion care.”