Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty
Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson is sharing her experience with childbirth after the Republican-led House of Representatives passed its first anti-abortion bills on Wednesday.
In a 222-209 vote, the House passed a bill that condemns “the recent attacks onpro-life facilities, groups, and churches.”
The House also passed theBorn-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Actin a 220-210 vote (one House member voted present).
Per the Congress website,the latter bill"establishes requirements for the degree of care a health care practitioner must provide in the case of a child born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion."
Addressing the House and SpeakerKevin McCarthyon Wednesday, Wilson — who shared her speech on Twitter — called out the bill. She shared that she had heard other congresswomen come forward, and despite her own hesitations of making a very private matter public, she wanted to reveal her story.
She added that, since she was a child, she wanted “plenty of children that I could love and cuddle and raise to greatness. That was the school principal in me even back then.”
After marrying her husband Paul Wilson in 1968, she later found out she was pregnant.
Unfortunately, Wilson got devastating news when she was more than halfway through her pregnancy.
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In a follow-up clip she continued, “I had to learn how, first of all, to handle the immensegrief that comes with losing a childand the fact that the corpse of that child was still within me. I cried every night and all day. My little body was wretched with pain, weakness, and frailty. I lost 50 pounds. I would crawl into a fetal position in my mother’s lap most of the day, and in my husband’s most of the night.”
Wilson then urged the House, “I beg you, I plead you, we can’t go back. Lord have mercy, please have mercy on women like me. I almost died.”
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She shared that she and her family held a graveside burial for the child, and “doctors were so afraid that I would also have had to have a graveside burial.”
“Everyone who needs reproductive healthcareis different,” said the representative in her final video. “Abortion does not only apply to women who have decided for themselves they’re not ready to have a child. Abortion affects women who are at risk of facing medical emergencies, life-altering emergencies and death.”
Concluding with a pointed message, Wilson said, “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, let the women march on and on till victory is won. You cannot put young childbearing women at risk because of a group of ludicrous hateful majority male congressmen who have no idea what it feels to even bear the pain of childbirth or even have the courage to carry a child for nine months, who take pride in monitoring women’s vaginas. How dare you, how dare you, how dare you. May God help you find it in your heart to hear my story and never wish that kind of pain and grief that I experienced on another living soul. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. I yield back.”
source: people.com
