Florida GOP Rep Nearly Dies Under Abortion Law She Supports, Highlighting 1 Fatal Conservative Flaw

A Florida Republican’s response to her life-threatening experience with ectopic pregnancy highlights the problem with the GOP’s understanding of reproductive health and freedom.

In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Rep. Kat Cammack shared how medical professionals delayed giving her the shot of methotrexate needed to terminate her nonviable ectopic pregnancy last May due to concerns about the legal consequences under Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

Rather than examine the state law’s vague language and challenging implications for health providers and patients, Cammack blamed the dangerous delay in treatment on messaging from the left.

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” she said.

“There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she added.

Cammack’s experience and her characterization of the issue underscores the GOP’s misunderstanding of pregnancy complications and the very real consequences of anti-abortion legislation.

“An ectopic pregnancy is an abnormally located pregnancy ― a pregnancy that has implanted somewhere that it is not supposed to be,” Dr. Natalie DiCenzo, an OB-GYN and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told HuffPost.

Most ectopic pregnancies occur in a fallopian tube, but they might also implant in other areas, such as the cervix, an ovary, the scar from a previous C-section, the liver or elsewhere in the abdominal cavity. Still, more than 90% are tubal.

“This condition is nonviable and potentially life-threatening, as the implantation site cannot support fetal development,” said OB-GYN Dr. Kecia Gaither.

As an ectopic pregnancy progresses, it can cause the structure in which it is growing to rupture.

“The pregnant person can experience rapid internal bleeding that leads to hemorrhagic shock ― vital organs shut down due to acute massive blood loss,” DiCenzo said. “Ruptured ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of pregnancy-related mortality in early pregnancy. A tubal ectopic pregnancy will never result in a live birth. The medical recommendation is to end the pregnancy as soon as possible to prevent the risk of rupture.”

In the case of a rupture, emergency surgery is necessary to prevent these potentially fatal complications. For those who survive, their future fertility might be compromised. Typically the ruptured tube must be removed, but it may be saved in some cases.

“Tubal ectopic pregnancies that are not yet ruptured can be treated using medication or surgery,” DiCenzo explained. “If the patient is a good candidate, medical management involves the use of a medication called methotrexate to stop the growth of the pregnancy. Surgical management, usually via laparoscopy, means looking into the abdomen to locate and remove the ectopic pregnancy and/or the fallopian tube that contains the ectopic pregnancy.”

There are slightly different management strategies for other types of ectopic pregnancies, but all require treatment to end the nonviable pregnancy.

“It’s important for patients to be cautious about anti-abortion disinformation recommending alternatives to standard, evidence-based medical treatments for ectopic pregnancy,” said Ashley Kurzweil, senior policy analyst for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women and Families. “Ectopic pregnancies are life-threatening, and the junk science that anti-abortion extremists push is dangerous and designed to stigmatize abortion care.”

In 2019, Republican legislators in Ohio introduced a bill that threatened doctors with prosecution for “abortion murder” if they did not take steps to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into the uterus ― a procedure that is not medically possible. Three years later, a GOP state representative in Missouri put forth legislation that would make it a felony to terminate an ectopic pregnancy.

Although those bills did not ultimately become law, other anti-abortion legislation has curtailed access to life-saving treatment for ectopic pregnancies.

“Many abortion bans, like the Florida ban, use broad language defining abortion as ending a pregnancy in any way other than birth,” noted Nan Strauss, the senior policy analyst for maternal health at National Partnership for Women and Families.

That kind of definition leaves room for the criminalization of ectopic pregnancy treatment, forcing health providers and administrators to tread carefully.

“The text of anti-abortion legislation is vague and often does not include explicit exceptions, for treatment of ectopic pregnancy or other medical emergencies, yet also carries significant penalties such as felony charges or loss of medical license,” DiCenzo said.

She pointed to the current Florida abortion law, which states “a physician may not knowingly perform or induce a termination of pregnancy if the physician determines the gestational age of the fetus is more than six weeks” unless they can certify that it’s necessary in order to “save the pregnant woman’s life or avert a serious risk of imminent substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

The threat of prison and loss of the ability to practice medicine can compel professionals to interpret these kinds of laws very conservatively.

“If confronted with an ectopic pregnancy after six weeks, a health care provider or institution might wonder if an ectopic pregnancy must be ruptured in order to guarantee meeting ‘life-saving’ criteria in the eyes of the law, even if it may be straightforward in the eyes of medicine,” DiCenzo said. “Those in restricted settings across the country have been asking themselves the same questions for various pregnancy-related circumstances ― what the law would consider as a ‘serious risk’ of ‘substantial physical impairment of a major bodily function’? How does one define serious risk, and who gets to define it?”

She emphasized that the patient is consistently left out of this determination, which instead “involves ascending the medicolegal food chain to ask department chairs, ethics committees, lawyers, hospital administrators, etc.” And the whole process takes up precious time ― something that is often in short supply when it comes to life-saving emergency care.

“Ectopic pregnancies, like other pregnancy complications, are deeply traumatic and can become life-threatening in a matter of hours,” said Keisha Mulfort, deputy director of communications at the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “What many people don’t realize is how the current legal restrictions and vague language in Florida’s abortion laws have made it harder for doctors to act quickly. When providers have to pause and interpret legal risk instead of prioritizing patient health, it puts lives in danger.”

Abortion legislation doesn’t just put patients at risk for delays, but also denials of necessary care.

Last year, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed complaints against two Texas hospitals for refusing to provide emergency treatment to women experiencing tubal ectopic pregnancies.

The experts who spoke to HuffPost expressed their relief that Rep. Cammack was ultimately able to receive the life-saving care she needed to terminate her ectopic pregnancy. They disagreed with her characterization of the cause of the delayed treatment, however.

“Her story is a reminder of the very real and life-threatening complications pregnant patients routinely face,” Mulfort said. “But the delays she experienced are not the result of advocates defending abortion access ― they are a direct consequence of Florida lawmakers passing extreme, confusing and politically motivated abortion bans.”

She added that the “deliberately vague” laws create a climate of confusion and fear, pushing doctors to make impossible choices and vulnerable patients to navigate an ever-shifting legal maze.

“Abortion bans forced Cammack’s health care providers to wonder: Has this terminal pregnancy made her sick enough for us to do our job without getting arrested?” said Grace Howard, an assistant professor of justice studies at San Jose State University. “Republican abortion bans, the ones she advocates for, put her in a position where she was forced to advocate for herself to save her own life. Her health care providers weren’t responding to the fearmongering left. They were attempting to maintain their ethical obligations to their patients while also not breaking the law, which could result in loss of medical and nursing licenses, fines and up to five years in prison.”

Rather than use her position of power to address confusing and harmful laws, Cammack decided to point fingers at those who have identified and spoken out about the health and legal implications of our current reproductive landscape.

“It is clear that the anti-abortion movement is intent on blaming anyone other than themselves for the harm that anti-abortion rhetoric and legislation has historically and will continue to cause to pregnant people,” DiCenzo said. “The anti-abortion crowd has been attempting to shift the conversation to argue that restrictive abortion legislation is clear in its definitions and in its exceptions for when it is legally acceptable to end a pregnancy, despite the mountain of evidence from pregnant patients and health care providers in restricted states that says otherwise.”

In September 2024, Physicians for Human Rights published a brief focused on the dangers of Florida’s extreme abortion ban, which features an OB-GYN’s account of a patient whose ectopic pregnancy treatment was delayed due to concerns about methotrexate being an “abortive agent.” (Before mifepristone became widely available, a combination of methotrexate and misoprostol was commonly used for early medical abortion.)

Although the majority of Florida voters supported a ballot initiative to restore reproductive freedom, it did not meet the 60% threshold required to pass. And in the aftermath, conservative lawmakers seem to have doubled down on their efforts by pushing even more extreme and restrictive bills ― including one that allows private citizens to sue doctors and seemingly anyone who helps someone terminate a pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently rescinded federal guidance around the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which required hospitals participating in Medicare to provide abortion care when necessary to stabilize pregnant patients in the event of a medical emergency.

“Assigning blame to advocates for speaking out about harmful policies distracts from the real issue ― these laws are causing fear, uncertainty and hesitation in urgent medical situations,” Mulfort said. “That should concern all of us, regardless of political affiliation.”