ICYMI
ICYMI: Georgia Mom and Genetics Researcher Pens Letter to the Editor on How the State’s Abortion Ban Nearly Killed Her
Today, Avery Davis Bell, a genetics researcher, mother, and Reproductive Freedom for All member based in Decatur, published a letter to the editor in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sharing her story of how Georgia’s six-week abortion ban nearly cost her her life.
In 2024, Bell was 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke, and her doctors told her her baby could not survive. Hemorrhaging and facing sepsis, her doctors knew exactly what she needed but were legally prohibited from providing it. They were forced to watch her deteriorate until her condition became life-threatening enough to satisfy the law.
She writes: “Politicians don’t belong in the exam room…Georgia’s abortion ban blocks doctors from using the lifesaving knowledge we already possess, worsening our maternal health crisis. It nearly left my child motherless.”
Reproductive Freedom for All, which is proud to count Avery Davis Bell among its more than 4 million members, has endorsed Senator Jon Ossoff for reelection for his record of demanding accountability on Georgia’s abortion ban.
Georgia has the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the country, and more than half of its counties have no OB-GYN.
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For over 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.