I remember the moment my world went sideways: My daughter had just been born, warm against my chest, when the room shifted from joy to panic. I was hemorrhaging. My placenta was not delivering as it should. I kept asking, “Are we going to the OR?” Minutes stretched into an hour. Cabinets slammed. People rushed. I thought, I am going to die, and I won’t even get to name my child.
I survived — barely. I needed a procedure that, in normal circumstances, is routine and fast.
Instead, I waited while blood gushed out on my hospital bed. Afterward, I learned what many Texans already know: Care that should be straightforward becomes confusing and delayed when politics wedges itself between doctors and their patients.
That day turned me from a grateful new mom into a reluctant witness. It shouldn’t take nearly dying to understand that in Texas, the simplest reproductive care — care used for miscarriages, for preventing hemorrhage, for clearing the uterus — is treated with suspicion by politicians with zero medical training. And now lawmakers led by the Texas GOP want to supercharge that fear.
Let’s call House Bill 7 what it is: an attack on maternal health. House Bill 7, The Women and Child Protection Act, does not protect anyone.
Instead, it will cause clinicians to second guess if they can use the very tools needed to keep patients alive — the same medications and procedures used every day to control bleeding after delivery, manage miscarriages, and avoid sepsis. If you punish the people who prescribe, dispense, or even discuss those tools, care gets slower and sloppier. In obstetrics, delays are critical. They result in blood loss, infection, hysterectomies, and funerals.
What does that mean in real life? A pharmacist hesitates and a postpartum mom bleeds longer.
A hospital lawyer needs to sign-off and a D&C gets delayed. A miscarriage patient is told to “come back sicker” so the paperwork is cleaner. House Bill 7 doesn’t create safety — it creates second-guessing in the hour when minutes matter most.
I’ve heard people say, “Well, abortion doesn’t affect me.”
It’s hard to hear that and not think of the blood pooling under my body while I waited for a basic procedure. This isn’t theoretical. The same medications and techniques labeled “abortion” are often the fastest, safest way to treat complications after childbirth and miscarriage. If you’ve ever needed care after birth — control a hemorrhage, remove retained placenta, treat an incomplete miscarriage — you’ve already relied on the very care House Bill 7 puts under threat.
I’m writing this not only as a mother who almost didn’t make it home, but on behalf of the families across Texas who have carried trauma we never asked for: dads who watched partners fade to gray while lawyers debated; grandparents who stood in neonatal units, praying their daughters would be believed; siblings who learned too early what words like “hemorrhage,” “sepsis,” and “D&C” mean.
We are signing our names to say we will not accept another law that multiplies fear, confusion, and delay in the moments where every second counts. That’s why families across Texas have joined me in signing a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott begging him to veto this bill — families who know firsthand what it means to live under Texas’s abortion bans. You can read that full letter here.
Gov. Abbott, I wish I could take you into the room with me — to smell the antiseptic, to hear the monitors, to feel the tilt from wonder to terror. I wish you could meet the nurse who squeezed my hand, the anesthesiologist who cracked a joke that didn’t land because I couldn’t stop shaking. I wish you could see my husband’s face as they wheeled me out of the delivery room not knowing if he’d ever see me again. I wish you could know the miracle of waking up and hearing someone say the words, “You’re okay.”
But I also wish you could see what happens after: the bills, the nightmares, the way ordinary errands — pharmacy, pediatrician, obstetric follow-ups — start to feel like checkpoints you have to clear. The way your mind rehearses what you’ll say if someone questions your prescriptions or your intentions: I’m a mom. I’m trying to stay alive.
Please just let me take care of my family.
Some Texas leaders have tried to patch the holes the bans ripped open, offering “clarifications” that doctors don’t have to wait until we’re at death’s door. If that were enough, I wouldn’t be writing this. The reality on the ground — the second-guessing, the paperwork, the fear of litigation — doesn’t vanish with a press release. HB 7 hard-codes hesitation into maternal care, and hesitation is the enemy of safe obstetrics.
I love this state. My friends are here. My family is here. My daughter will grow up here. Loving Texas means telling the truth about what our laws are doing to us — and refusing to add another one that turns neighbors into informants and medical care into a courtroom exhibit.
Gov. Abbott, I am begging you to not sign House Bill 7. Veto the bill — not just to protect privacy or pharmacy counters, but to protect maternal health in Texas. Let doctors treat bleeding without a lawyer. Let pharmacists fill prescriptions without a courtroom in the back of their minds. Let families bring parents home from the hospital.
I nearly died bringing my daughter into the world. I’m grateful I didn’t. I’m also determined that no other parent, no other grandparent, no other sibling, will ever have to wonder if the law is the reason their loved one didn’t make it home.
Veto this bill. Let families live.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions presented by guest contributors to The Barbed Wire do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the company, the newsroom, its staff, advisers, or advertisers.
