Congresswoman Frederica Wilson told the story of how she was forced to carry her stillborn baby until labor before Roe v. Wade … even though it could’ve killed her.
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00:00I almost died. As the days became weeks and the weeks became months, the baby began to
00:06disintegrate and the flesh from the corpse began to fill into my bloodstream.
00:12After getting married in 1968, I would soon become a mother-to-be. It was the joy of my
00:19life. I was ecstatic. My husband was walking on the clouds. My husband and I would touch
00:25my stomach all the time just to feel the movement of our baby boy and the glory of a life growing
00:32inside of me. It was amazing. Then at seven months, the baby stopped moving. He was soon
00:39pronounced dead, right inside of my womb. And the doctor was prohibited by law from
00:46inducing labor. I had to learn how, first of all, to handle the immense grief that comes
00:54with losing a child and the fact that the corpse of that child was still within me.
01:02I cried every night and all day. My little body was wretched with pain, weakness, and
01:09frailty. I lost 50 pounds. I would crawl into a fetal position in my mother's lap most of
01:16the day and in my husband's most of the night. I almost died. As the days became weeks and
01:23the weeks became months, the baby began to disintegrate and the flesh from the corpse
01:29began to fill into my bloodstream. I was at risk for toxic shock. Poison was flowing through
01:37my grief-stricken little body. At eight and a half months, I went into labor, hard, painful
01:45labor. And what was left of the baby Wilson boy was born. Oh, what a day. Oh, what pain,
01:53oh, what grief, oh, what despair, oh, what suffering. After three days, I left the maternity
01:59ward in a wheelchair, empty-handed, no baby, no nothing. I watched other mothers and families
02:05celebrate their newborns while I grieved and cried. We had a small graveside burial for
02:11baby boy Wilson, and the doctors were so afraid that I would also have had to have
02:18a graveside burial. Do not take us back to the days before Roe v. Wade. Everyone who
02:26needs reproductive health care is different. Abortion does not only apply to women who
02:33have decided for themselves they're not ready to have a child. Abortion affects women who
02:39are at risk of facing medical emergencies, life-altering emergencies, and death. God
02:47of our weary years, God of our silent tears, let the women march on and on till victory
02:54is won. You cannot put young, childbearing women at risk because of the group of ludicrous,
03:02hateful majority male congressmen who have no idea what it feels to even bear the pain
03:08of childbirth or even have the courage to carry a child for nine months, who take pride
03:14in monitoring women's vaginas. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you? May God help you
03:23find it in your heart to hear my story and never wish that kind of pain and grief that
03:30I experienced on another living soul. I have heard the women of Congress come to the floor
03:39one by one by one to tell their personal stories about abortion. I'm a very private person
03:49and I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to relive the most painful time in my entire
03:57life. But yesterday I read the startling statistics about my state. If abortion is
04:07banned nationwide, Florida will be the most impacted state, seeing maternal deaths increase
04:15by 29 percent. That's the mother. The nation will see a 24 percent increase in maternal
04:22death with a disproportionate 39 percent rise in maternal mortality for black women.