Thanks to Republicans, life in the United States—if not on a global scale—feels more and more dystopian every day. If it comes to human rights and equality, there’s (sadly) more than likely at least one angle conservatives are attacking from in order to keep their voting base outraged and distracted, just in time to get them into the voting booths for midterm elections. Sure, conservatives could campaign on actual policies and be transparent, but we all know that’s not the conservative way, thanks in part to (but not exclusively because of) Donald Trump.
One of the more dystopian scenarios playing out centers around abortion access. All people deserve access to safe, affordable, and accessible reproductive health care, and that includes abortion access. Abortions are safe, medically sound health procedures that should be available to those who need or want them—and they should be legal everywhere. But Republicans have decided to go after autonomy, whether that’s abortion, gender-affirming health care, or in some even more extreme cases, birth control. Terrifying.
In Missouri, an under-discussed abortion story has been developing over recent weeks. A woman (Mylissa Farmer) appeared in a televised campaign ad for U.S. Senate candidate Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, in which she explained that she could not receive the life-saving health care she needed at Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, because of the state’s incredibly restrictive abortion ban. Since then, state agencies have allegedly investigated not only the hospital that told her the pregnancy wasn’t viable, but the treatment she received, as reported by the Missouri Independent. We don’t have all of the context yet, but at least one Democratic representative thinks a certain Republican running for a Senate seat is behind these investigations.
To state the obvious, this is truly frightening for all involved. But first, let’s review Farmer’s heartbreaking nightmare, and how we got here to begin with.
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While speaking during the ad, Farmer says her physicians in Missouri weren’t allowed to provide her with the life-saving care she needed when her water broke almost 18 weeks into her pregnancy. The baby’s chance of survival was essentially zero, but Farmer still couldn’t receive her abortion care because physicians could still detect a heartbeat in the fetus. So when she was admitted to the hospital on Aug. 2, she had to then go elsewhere to get the care she desperately needed.
“Elsewhere” meant “across state lines, to Illinois,” thanks to Republicans, that is.
Here’s that 30-second ad where she shares some of her story in her own words.
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In short: Missouri was one of the earliest states to overturn almost all abortion access post-Dobbs, Farmer was in a terrible, terrible situation. According to Farmer’s story as shared with the Springfield News-Leader, Farmer asked state Sen. Bill White’s office for guidance, and they gave her a referral to an anti-abortion pregnancy center. (Yes, really.) The office reportedly told Farmer they would clarify the issue with Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is staunchly anti-choice, but Farmer says she never heard from Schmitt, who is running for U.S. Senate. (Again: Yes, really.)
She ended up getting an abortion a few days later in Illinois, per the article.
“Eric Schmitt doesn’t care about women like me,” Farmer says in the ad in reference to Schmitt, whose campaign responded by asking television stations to remove the ad from the air. (At the time of writing, it seems no ads have been removed.)
According to House Democrat Crystal Quade of Missouri, it’s not just efforts to get the ad removed from the airways, either. Quade says that workers from the Department of Health and Senior Services went to the hospital Farmer referenced and had been told to investigate specifically the treatment Farmer received. And she wants answers about why and how this happened.
“The timing of this investigation is suspicious and concerning, to say the least,” Quade said in part to the Independent, adding that the investigation “suggests that the substantial taxpayer-funded investigative power of state government is being weaponized against citizens for political retaliation.”
Quade also requested communication records from involved departments under the Sunshine Law. In speaking to the Independent via phone, Quade clarified she learned about the investigators visiting thanks to a report from a whistleblower.
“I do believe that when individuals are telling their stories about what is happening in our state,” Quade said, in reference to the possibility that Schmitt is, to put it simply, panicking over the polls. “It will be effective.”
In an email to Jezebel on the matter, Quade noted she believes constituents deserve to know “whether any Missouri woman or girl’s personal health care records can now be subjected to invasive, targeted scrutiny by the AG office or any other agency of state government without sufficient reason,” which is part of why she’s not letting this go.
This situation is clearly still unfolding, but in the simplest summary, one could take away a very scary message. If you speak out about the ways Republican anti-choice laws impact you, the state might use its power to investigate you, as well as the providers who cared for you. If that’s not a scary dystopia, I don’t know what it is.
Here's how we stop the GOP from criminalizing abortion and stealing elections: Donate $5 to to support Democratic candidates for attorney general in five key states.
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