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Three women — Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua and Hadley Duvall — spoke about their experiences with abortion, miscarriage and pregnancy on the opening night of Democratic National Convention. 

All three speakers have emerged as key surrogates for the Democratic Party, campaigning in support of Vice President Kamala Harris. Zurawski’s husband Josh, who has also campaigned for Harris, spoke alongside her.

Zurawski, who rose to prominence after suing the state of Texas over its abortion ban, was a guest at President Joe Biden’s February 2023 State of the Union address; she also shared her experience in an April ad on behalf of what was then the campaign to re-elect Biden. Joshua, of Louisiana, has been a regular presence at Harris campaign events and appeared in a June ad for the Democratic presidential campaign. Duvall, a Kentucky resident, appeared in a campaign spot for Gov. Andy Beshear last year, and in a July ad backing Biden.

“A second Trump term would rip away even more of our rights: passing a national abortion ban, letting states monitor pregnancies and prosecute doctors, restricting birth control and fertility treatments,” Zurawski said on Monday night. “We cannot let that happen. We need to vote as if lives depend on it — because they do.”

Abortion is a core component of Harris’ election pitch. Other expected speakers this week — including former Planned Parenthood leader Cecile Richards, current leader Alexis McGill Johnson in her capacity as head of the organization’s political arm, and Mini Timmaraju of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All — are also likely to use their time to draw a contrast between Democrats, who largely support abortion rights, and Republicans, who generally back bans and restrictions on the procedure. 

Abortion has not historically received this much attention at the party’s national gathering. But it reflects the fact that this year the party views abortion — an issue on which they generally poll better with voters than do Republicans — as one that could help them retain the White House, and potentially even win control of Congress. 

Amanda Zurawski

Zurawski, who spoke Monday alongside her husband, was one of the first women to sue a state over its abortion ban since 1973, the year that Roe v. Wade was decided.

An Austin resident, she became pregnant in 2022 after months of fertility treatment. But when she was 18 weeks pregnant, her water broke prematurely, and her pregnancy was no longer viable. By that point, just a few months after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe, Texas had banned abortion almost entirely. The state’s only exception is if the procedure is necessary to save the patient’s life — language doctors have repeatedly said is impossibly vague and hard to put into practice. Violating the state’s ban is a felony, which has made doctors nervous about providing abortions until a patient is near death.

Although abortion is the standard treatment in a situation like hers, Zurawski had to wait three days before she could receive an abortion — and could only get care after she had developed sepsis, a life-threatening infection. 

In March 2023, she joined a lawsuit seeking further clarity from the state about who qualifies for a medical exception. The case eventually drew 22 plaintiffs. This May, the state supreme court ruled against them, declining to provide more detail about what constitutes a medical exception.

“Every time I share our story my heart breaks — for the baby girl we wanted desperately, for the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely, for Josh, who feared he would lose me, too,” Zurawski said. “But I was lucky. I lived. So I’ll continue sharing our story, standing with women and families across the country.”

Kaitlyn Joshua

Joshua blames Louisiana’s strict abortion laws for her inability to receive miscarriage care. The state has several abortion bans in place; the strictest only allows abortion if the pregnant person’s life is at risk or if abortion is needed to avert “serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ.”

Joshua, who shared her story with NPR in 2022, said she was unable to get prenatal care in her first trimester of pregnancy, a change in policy she said her doctor’s office attributed to the state abortion ban.  

Eleven weeks into her pregnancy, Joshua began to miscarry. But she struggled to get care; two emergency rooms turned her away, she said. The standard treatment for miscarriage is the same as for abortion, using either medication or a dilation and curettage procedure. At the time, she said, the experience deterred her and her husband from trying to become pregnant again. 

In a Biden campaign ad, Joshua said the state’s abortion bans were a “direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade.”

“I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” she said on stage Monday. “No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.”

Hadley Duvall

Duvall was not directly affected by the undoing of Roe, which resulted in a near-total abortion ban in her home state of Kentucky. Still, she has become one of its most prominent abortion rights advocates, sharing the story of her own experience with a pregnancy that resulted from sexual abuse.

“I can’t imagine not having a choice, but today that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” Duvall said at the convention. “He calls it ‘a beautiful thing.’ What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”

Duvall, now in her early 20s, became pregnant when she was 12, a result of rape by her stepfather. She ultimately experienced a miscarriage, but Duvall has spoken about her experience to criticize the state law’s extremely narrow exceptions.

Kentucky’s ban, which is undergoing a legal challenge in state court, only allows the procedure to save a pregnant person’s life or prevent disabling injuries. It excludes mental health concerns and does not permit abortion in cases of rape or incest — meaning that someone like Duvall would not have qualified.

“Trump and J.D. Vance don’t care about women. They don’t care about girls in this situation,” Duvall said in the July ad.

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