As they reflect on their trauma, both cry across the table from me. The Cooks are now in couples counseling and seeing therapists individually. It was within days that the Cooks would learn that their baby would not be born alive. The Cooks were going to have a daughter they planned to name her Bunny. You shouldn’t be able to make a decision about my body,” she says defiantly, noting how desperately she wanted to have her child. Anya has a sharp message for Republican lawmakers across the country. But in the states where abortion is now banned or severely restricted, doctors can find their hands tied in cases like Anya’s, unable to provide often necessary care. Before the fall of Roe, the standard treatment for her condition-ending the pregnancy-was standard and readily available. Anya suffered from previable preterm premature rupture of membranes, or previable PPROM. “They don’t understand they’re going to kill people,” Anya says of the lawmakers legislating women’s bodies. With the 2024 election on the horizon, the Cooks intend to keep sharing their story. The reality remains that the majority of American adults support the right to abortion and the protections once afforded under Roe v. We don’t need to divide America over this issue anymore.” (Though it is important to note that her critics are quick to point out that Haley’s position on this issue is rooted more in rhetoric than substance.) “As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said. Perhaps most notably, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to acknowledge the unpopularity of the Republican Party’s antiabortion stance. And on the debate stage the following night for the GOP presidential primary, candidates scrambled for a fresh position. “You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote,” Santorum said in an interview. Laughably, former senator Rick Santorum bemoaned “pure democracies” and the fact that Ohioans overwhelmingly voted in favor of ballot measures to protect abortion access and legalize marijuana. On the heels of the 2023 elections, Republicans contorted countless explanations for the results. That abortion remains a motivating issue for voters has left Republican politicians scrambling for a salient message on the topic. Earlier this month, voters in Ohio, and ostensibly in Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, voted in support of abortion access. As the devastating ramifications of reproductive rights restrictions have come into sharp focus, voters have again and again taken to the polls to demonstrate just how out of step the Republican Party is with the American public. At the time of Anya’s miscarriage, Florida had a 15-week abortion ban on the books Governor Ron DeSantis has since signed a draconian six-week ban into law, though it has not yet gone into effect, as a case challenging the 15-week ban is currently being considered by the state’s Supreme Court. The contours of the Cook family’s nightmare have become increasingly familiar since the Supreme Court gutted federal protections for abortion 17 months ago. “I just went with the best answer: Save my wife and her uterus.” Since then, Anya has had to undergo a string of surgeries as a result of the complications she suffered. The doctors asked Derick whether they should prioritize saving Anya’s life or her uterus. After hours of surgery, Anya lost roughly half the blood in her body. Anya recalls with vivid detail the sound of her fetus hitting the bowl of the toilet as blood poured out of her, dripping down her legs. It was never the plan to deliver her baby in the bathroom of a hair salon. “One thing my grandmother always said, ‘You make yourself look presentable so when they catch you dead, you’re already ready,’” she tells me. She went to get her hair done the next day. She’d been sent away with antibiotics and told she would have to wait to have her miscarriage alone. After a wait of more than 45 minutes in the emergency room-amniotic fluid still seeping from Anya’s body-a doctor had informed her that she would lose the child, but, given Florida’s strict abortion ban, there was nothing they could do. But being only about 16 weeks along in her pregnancy-six weeks before a fetus can potentially survive on its own outside the uterus-she’d known something was wrong her husband, Derick Cook, had rushed her to the emergency room at the Broward Health hospital in Coral Springs, Florida. As Anya Cook sat at the hairdresser, she thought she might die.
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