This ban affects more than just the women who need second-trimester abortions and the family and friends who support them. With this decision, the Supreme Court gave politicians the green light to interfere in private, personal health care decisions.
Video Testimonials
Real women share their personal stories and explain how the federal abortion ban would have jeopardized their health and safety.
Donna's Story
"My health was at risk, but they didn't know why. I guess one of the biggest health risks at the time was that I kept bleeding, but since they didn't know why I was bleeding they didn't know how to stop it. But losing the blood all the time and bleeding so much I didn't feel healthy and I was very concerned about giving birth to a baby that would die.
"To have a politician telling the doctor what is the best course of medical action for a patient is just ridiculous. There's no way to be able to decide that on a sweeping basis; it's so individual. It's so hard to imagine. (I mean) I don't even want to tell you what you should have for lunch yet alone what you can do with the rest of your life. It's so hard to imagine that someone who doesn't know me ... my family, my friends — they couldn't even make this decision for me. To think that someone who I didn't even know, who'd never met me would be able to decide this and then decide the fate of the doctor.
"Subsequent to this pregnancy I am fortunate and happy enough to have two wonderful daughters. To think that if my daughters got pregnant and had been in the same situation that they wouldn't have been able to make this choice is horrifying, so it's just really personal and it can't be something that's decided, you know, by people in suits far, far away. My empathy would be for any woman who would be in a situation like this ... that it needs to be her decision in conjunction with her family and her doctor and her support group."
Robin's Story
"When he told me that there was really something seriously wrong, my life changed at that very moment forever, and I will always look back at that point and it made me realize among other things that there's no way you can deal with this in the abstract, that until it happens to you, until it's real, you just don't know how you're going to feel, you don't know what you're going to do.
"It's the single most difficult choice I've ever had to make in my life and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The day that I got the phone call I was out shopping for maternity clothes, you know. It never crossed my mind that I would be faced with that decision and my whole world fell apart. (I mean) I was this child's mom already and was also, you know, the mom of a one-year-old who, you know, I just knew that my decision was going to affect my whole family forever regardless, no matter what I did, and I just didn't think it was fair to anybody. I didn't think it was fair to the baby that I was carrying to bring it into the world to maybe not even be here for very long and to be very sick. So I made a decision that thankfully I was allowed to make, that I also thought was the best thing for my family for my life and my health and my situation.
"Doctors. Families. Women. People that know what they're facing are people who need to be making the decisions. These are people who are committed to helping people, and like I said, committed to helping women in their darkest moments, and the thought of being punished for doing their jobs and for doing them well and caring about their patients is just incredible to me. I mean, what does that say about how much we value women's lives and their health in this society? We're willing to let a woman face death or serious health failures to promote an ideology.
"I can only imagine the desperation that a woman would feel to find herself in that place and to not have any choice. "Since then I've had two more kids, and part of the healing process for me has really been knowing that if I had made a different choice the children that I have now wouldn't be here."
Teresa's Story
"I was 23 weeks pregnant and I had an ultrasound that seemed to indicate that there were some problems with the baby. There were delays in the bone growth. We saw two separate perinatologists who told us that our baby had a lethal form of skeletal dysplasia, which is a bone growth disorder, and that the baby would most certainly die and very soon after the birth.
"It was a decision that was pretty fraught with emotion and a great deal of sadness and grief, but we decided to end the pregnancy at that point. This would have been our first child.
"It was a decision that our family made; we did not make it lightly, and my husband and I had very much wanted this child, but we knew that she was given a body that couldn't sustain her life. I think that it's a decision that every parent and family needs to make on their own without any interference with politics. It's their choice. It should be their choice absolutely.
"I have such faith in the doctors who took care of us. The idea that their professional opinions would be completely discounted by politicians is an outrage. I mean, it's an insult to the medical profession. And it just makes me so angry; it makes me scared for the women in our country, it really does. "This is something that needs to be done. This law needs to be fought."
How have these issues touched your life?
