Ashley and Kyle were newlyweds in early 2022 and thrilled to be expecting their first child. But bleeding had plagued Ashley from the beginning of her pregnancy, and in July, at seven weeks, she began miscarrying. This story also ran on .
It can be . The couple’s heartbreak came a few weeks after the U.S.
Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion. In Wisconsin, their home state, an 1849 law had sprung back into effect, halting abortion care except when a pregnant woman faced death. Insurance coverage for abortion care in the U.
S. is a hodgepodge. Patients often don’t know when or if a procedure or abortion pills are covered, and the proliferation of abortion bans has exacerbated the confusion.
Ashley said she got caught in that tangle of uncertainties. Ashley’s life wasn’t in danger during the miscarriage, but the state’s abortion ban meant doctors in Wisconsin could not perform a D&E — dilation and evacuation — even during a miscarriage until the embryo died. She drove back and forth to the hospital, bleeding and taking sick time from work, until doctors could confirm that the pregnancy had ended.
Only then did doctors remove the pregnancy tissue. “The first pregnancy was the first time I had realized that something like that could affect me,” said Ashley, who asked to be identified by her middle name and her husband by his first name only. She works in a government agency alongside conservative co-workers and fears retribution for discussing h.