Florida Republican Representative Kat Cammack was widely criticized after opening up to reporter Tara Palmeri about having trouble accessing abortion for an ectopic pregnancy in Florida after she helped pass a six-week abortion ban in the state.

Cammack told the Wall Street Journal that she faced delays in receiving treatment for a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy shortly after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect in May 2025.


Cammack blamed those delays not on the law itself but on what she described as misleading messaging from abortion-rights advocates that had made healthcare workers fearful of legal repercussions, telling the Journal:

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst. There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.'"

  • PattyMcB@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    “what I went through wasn’t an abortion.”

    Wooooow. The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.

    • arctanthrope@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      it couldn’t have been an abortion, there was no satanic priest in a hooded black robe, goat skull headdress, and ritual dagger

    • Jay@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      Welcome to 'murica, where everything is made up and the definition of words don’t matter!

      • DougPiranha42@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Except that this is defined in the law, this is why healthcare providers are advised by their legal teams not to do it.

        • osanna@lemmy.vg
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          3 days ago

          I believe in either Florida or Texas (I don’t remember which. Probably both tbh) it’s considered murder to get an abortion and can be punishable by death penalty. Fucking arsehats

          • ferrule@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            “We care about life so much that if you are about to die due to complications and you have an abortion we will kill you.”

            I guess at least with leathal injection it will most likely be less painful than dying in childbirth.

            • osanna@lemmy.vg
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              2 days ago

              Nah, they don’t give a fuck after you’re born. But before? LIFE IS PRECIOUS! Except mothers who need an abortion, for reasons as ectopic pregnancies etc. oh, wait. Those aren’t abortions* apparently. At least according to Kat

    • Zephorah@discuss.online
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      4 days ago

      The procedures are often the same. A D&C is a D&C, whether it’s used to deliberately abort a viable fetus or to clean out an unviable fetus. It literally means to Dilate the cervix (so the doctor can see inside and get their instruments in there) & Curratage (use a tool to scrape tissue out of the uterus).

      Or popping a pill to expel a fetus, viable or otherwise. Mifeprestone then Misoprostol vs Methotrexate then Misoprostol. In both cases, the first drug stops development, and the second drug expels the fetus.

      In all of these cases, you’re aborting the fetus. The context changes, the act is the same.

      • Janx@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        Wait until she learns about ectopic pregnancies…

        EDIT: Never mind, that’s what she had. I didn’t read it…

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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          She had an ectopic pregnancy. That’s why she needed an abortion, which she got (because it’s okay when it’s for me) but she’s complaining about the fact that fear of prosecution under HER law made pharmacies unwilling (edit: I should have said “hesitant”) to provide the necessary pills. It’s the fact that it wasn’t in her uterus that she’s using to claim it “wasn’t an abortion.”

          • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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            She didn’t get it “because it’s okay when it’s for me”

            She got it because it is a life-threatening condition that Florida’s anti-abortion laws do take into account, unlike some other states.

            However, doctors are so afraid of the law she supported that before they act they are compelled to document as much as possible and test and test.

            Additionally

            and either (1) two physicians so certify this conclusion “in [their] reasonable medical judgment” in writing, or (2) a single physician certifies that the risks are “imminent” and “another physician is not available for consultation.”12 “Reasonable medical judgment” is defined as “a medical judgment that would be made by a reasonably prudent physician

            If I were a physician I would almost always wait for the 2nd physician to sign off before allowing a Florida court judge me.

            She got treatment exactly as prescribed by the law

            https://abortiondefensenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Florida.pdf

            • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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              4 days ago

              What I meant was not that she was allowed to get it, of course the law was written to allow a bare minimum of protection for the life of the mother. And I have edited because I should have said hesitant rather than unwilling. They did give her the pills.

              My point was that she chose not to die for her beliefs, but instead carved out a nonsensical mental exception for herself by denying that the abortion was an abortion. When push came to shove, she chose to have her fetus (embryo? I bet she lied about it only being 5 weeks) killed instead of letting it die naturally and probably kill her in the process.

              Which, by the way, is the only sane decision and yet it’s the one she denies.

              • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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                of course the law was written to allow a bare minimum of protection for the life of the mother

                Yeah, I got some bad news about that.

                https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/a-review-of-exceptions-in-state-abortions-bans-implications-for-the-provision-of-abortion-services/

                Basically 6 states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) have no provision to protect the health of the pregnant person. They only have provisions to protect the life of the mother. The issue is it’s so poorly written in many states they have to wait until the mother is actively dying to act.

                Ectopic pregnancies are deadly, eventually. They can stay in place for weeks without actually killing the woman. It’s well documented that in many states women have been told to wait in the parking lot until the condition became severe enough that it was life threatening.

                • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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                  I’m well aware. It’s so brutal that saying it’s barbaric is unfair to barbarians. Fortunately for her, Florida wasn’t on that list. In the terrible past, a woman could say “I’ll kill myself if I have to continue this pregnancy,” which would allow the doctor to act to save her life. In the more-terrible present, the draconian laws are written to prevent any such acts of humanity. The thumb is pushing so hard on the scale towards the “baby” rather than the woman (who has no value except as a mother) that the laws are indeed poorly written, on purpose.

                  • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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                    Fortunately for her, Florida wasn’t on that list

                    She did a lot of work on this bill, and likely had a role in planning the exceptions. These poorly written exceptions that is.

                    The part that really highlighted it for me is she got to experience exactly what those actually mean practically. Of course instead of realizing this was her fault she blamed doctors for not understanding her poorly written law. Republicans can take no responsibility for their actions, its always someone else’s fault

          • Zephorah@discuss.online
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            3 days ago

            Back in the day, your birth tally, as recorded for every childbearing woman, terminations were terminations. 3 miscarriages? 3 terminations. 3 abortions? 3 terminations. 2 miscarriages and one abortion? 3 terminations. That’s not political, that is the neutrality (ideally) of medicine.

            Gravida: # of times pregnant Para: # of pregnancies that reached viable gestation, alive or not. Termination: # of losses previable

            So this gal, if it was her only pregnancy, would be G1, P0, T1 by that system.

            That’s when I was in school. I’m not in OB, but now they use GTPAL (you guys can look it up in total). I cannot find the year of the switch. But know older terminology may be referenced by some people.

            The P is preterm. Births between 20-37wks, live or stillborn.

            The A is abortion, and includes ALL losses before 20wks. Your body can self abort due to issues with the fetus. A lot of early miscarriages are like that, and, often happen on a toilet. GASP

            By the newer GTPAL system, this gal would be (assuming this was her only pregnancy): G1, T0, P0, A1, L0

            Note that A1 is Abortion: 1.

            I feel no joy in this. For me, it simply is, but this gal will likely continue to see it as something else.

            • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              3 days ago

              Yeah but all that sounds so complicated and it’s easier to just say it’s all the same and it’s all “murder”

              • Zephorah@discuss.online
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                Yeah. Take the D&C. The D is for dilation (of the cervix), so the doctor can see into the uterus and use instruments. The C stands for the tool used to scrape stuff out of the uterus. Could be a miscarriage. Could be an abortion. Could be polyp removal (like a uterine version of a skin tag, but can cause bleeding). Obtain a sample from an irritated uterus to test for cancer. Post menopausal women get this procedure. Old ladies. Young ladies.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      They’ve decided that if you’ll die if you don’t get it then it’s not an abortion, because abortions are elective. No, this is not a real medical distinction; It’s the same surgery.

      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        You’re close but it’s actually

        “They’ve decided that if I die if I don’t get it then it’s not an abortion, for everyone else it is an abortion”

        Small distinction I know but it makes a world of difference.

        You could likely actually trim it up a bit to a more simple

        “If I get it, it’s not an abortion”

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Its religious fundamentalism, aka, structured and mandated persistent irrational delusions, anti-reality cult member behavior

      When you realize these people just are a kind of insane that isn’t recognized as a mental disorder because you can still work a wage slave job while having it… … and because its broadly popular … everything starts to make more sense.

      America was founded by mostly a mixture of petty criminals and their descendants, and religious nutjobs, and their descendants.

      … if you abandon the melting pot / tapestry of differences with a backbone of principles … idea of America… you revert back to old habits and entrenched norms and material power structures.