Women increasingly fear being prosecuted for using abortion pills, advocacy groups say
Abortion rights advocates say women in states that have banned or restricted abortion since the overturn of Roe fear that they will be prosecuted for using abortion pills.
The Rev. Love Holt, a single mother of five, was rushed to an emergency room in Missouri last year after her mother found her passed out in her car and “covered in blood.” When Holt arrived at the hospital, fear filled her instead of relief.
“I just kept saying over and over, ‘Don’t f---ing die. Don’t say you took those pills,’” Holt told NBC News. “I was in fear, honestly, that I was going to be carted away from my hospital bed to a jail cell had they found out.”
A reproductive rights advocate who opposes the state’s near-total abortion ban, Holt, 38, had obtained abortion pills by mail and took them in her home at 13 weeks pregnant. Less than an hour later, she was bleeding heavily, cramping and feeling light-headed. To avoid frightening her children, Holt went outside and sat alone in her car, where she continued to hemorrhage.
When she arrived at the hospital, she told staff members she was having a miscarriage but did not say that she had taken abortion pills. She underwent a procedure called a dilation and curettage — commonly referred to as a D&C — to remove the tissue from the uterus.
“All of these things crossed my mind, like I can’t go to jail. I’m a breadwinner for my family and they need me,” said Holt. She added that she felt lucky that no one at the hospital reported her on suspicion of self-managing an abortion.
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