Thirty-year-old Kaitlyn Joshua was excited to expand her family. But six weeks into her pregnancy, she was rejected when she tried to make her first prenatal appointment. Why?
Because after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Louisiana medical staff didn’t want liability for patients who miscarried earlier than 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
Joshua began cramping and spotting, soon followed by heavy bleeding and pain. And since a miscarriage is a “spontaneous abortion,” hospital staff kept sending her home, where she eventually lost her pregnancy.
In the 80s, Brazilian activists continued the practice of enslaved and pre-colonized Africans' herbal abortifacients (abortion inducers), using the stomach ulcer medication misoprostol as an abortion pill.
Misoprostol can also induce labor, treat chronic pain from endometriosis, aid with IUD insertion, and stem blood loss – which was critical for Black women like Joshua, who are more likely to die from hemorrhaging.
But Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry recently signed legislation reclassifying misoprostol as a Schedule IV “controlled dangerous substance,” forcing doctors to devise new medical policies.
More bans mean more harm to more patients, whether terminating unwanted pregnancies, using birth control, struggling through a difficult labor, or losing a baby that they wanted.
“This experience has made me see how Black women die,” says Joshua. “Like this is how Black women are dying."