‘I wasn’t allowed to get the healthcare I needed’: the women suing Tennessee for being denied abortions
K Monica Kelly had to travel to Florida for an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 13 – now she’s part of a group suing her state
When K Monica Kelly saw that women in Texas had filed a lawsuit challenging the contours of their state’s abortion ban, she posted on Instagram to cheer them on.
“I shared how terrible I thought it was, that they weren’t able to get the proper healthcare they needed in their state,” Kelly said. “It never crossed my mind that that was actually going to happen to me soon.”
Kelly and her husband spent a year trying to have a second baby. So when they discovered in February 2023 that Kelly was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic. They taught their son, who was then two years old, to describe their family as: “Mama, dada, me, baby, all four!” After an ultrasound looked promising, and they drove more than 10 hours from their home in northern Tennessee to announce the news to their family in Florida.
Only days later, after they’d returned home, in late March, the pair drove back to Florida. This time, though, the drive was “surreal and devastating”, Kelly said. A series of catastrophic fetal diagnoses had led Kelly to decide to get an abortion – a procedure she could not legally get in Tennessee.
Trisomy 13 babies only have a 5-10% chance of making it past their first birthday.
As god intended! /s
By all means, let's force people through the trauma of knowing their kid will only live at most 16-18 months and will probably bankrupt the family with medical bills.
The cruelty here is off the charts (as the gop intended).
It's such a double standard for the large majority of these people. It's God's will that a baby should be born to suffer and die, but it's not God's will that they die of a heart attack, diabetes, or a simple infection.
If they really believed in God's will, they wouldn't be seeking medical care at all, for they were destined to suffer and die as well.
It's despicable, what they are imposing on these families. If you believe in miracles, put yourself in the hands of your God and wait for one yourself, asshats.
If all the doctors leave Texas etc then they'll have to believe in God's will.
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of doctors are also narcissistic capitalists, they will stay in Texas due to the low tax rate.
Only way around it is to reduce the barrier to entry-aka cost-of medical training. It’s almost limited to just the wealthy, if you can’t drop $150k+ on school, you don’t have a good chance of being a doctor.
So you have lots of doctors who were born wealthy, never struggled, had their education bankrolled, then graduate and have a hyper inflated self worth.
Yeah, let's prolong the suffering of the parents (and the baby) and force them to watch their child either die an early death in front of them, or live on needing care for probably the rest of their lives. During that time the family's finances and mental fortitude will be strained to their utmost limits, likely destroying the marriage and family in the process. This is surely the life that God intended.
Don't forget the added stress of health insurance claims being denied and accumulating medical debt.