Dallas woman testifies about leaving Texas for medically-necessary abortion
DALLAS - A Dallas woman spoke to U.S. Senators in Washington on Wednesday to describe her experience traveling out of the state for an abortion.
Lauren Miller testified at a hearing called by Democrats to discuss the impact of abortion laws across the country and to promote legislation meant to protect abortion travel.
Miller said that at her 12-week ultrasound she learned that one of the twins she was carrying was unlikely to survive.
"Our amazing medical team kept arriving at the same awful conclusion: One of our twin sons was going to die. It was just a matter of how soon," MIiller said. "Every day that he continued to grow, he put his twin and myself at greater and greater risk."
Miller said it became clear that an abortion was needed.
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"Because of Texas' new abortion laws, every single professional we spoke with told us the medical procedure I needed was illegal in Texas," she said.
Miller recounted the frustrated reaction of her doctor after one of her "most devastating ultrasounds."
"He ripped off his gloves, threw them at the trash and told us, ‘This baby isn’t going to make it to birth. I can't help you. You need to leave the state,'" said Miller.
She told Senators that a few days after the doctor's advice, she had to be taken to the hospital, where she was told she was at risk for damage to her kidneys and brain.
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Miller made the decision to travel to Colorado to get an abortion. Her other son was born healthy.
At the end of May, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a challenge brought by Miller and 19 other women who argued the state's near-total abortion law stopped them from getting medical care for their complicated pregnancies.
"My pregnancy was not my own. It belonged to the state and, ultimately, the opinions of Texas politicians and government lawyers completely overrode the medical judgment of my physicians and trampled my Constitutional rights," Miller told the Senators.
In March, the Texas Medical Board released a list of proposed rules to help doctors know when an emergency abortion is allowed under state law.
The guidance was widely criticized by doctors and patients at a hearing in May.
Data from The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights group, says that 35,500 patients from Texas traveled out of the state for an abortion in 2023. In 2019, that number was 2,400.