About 10 weeks into her pregnancy, Nancy Davis, a black woman with a partner and three children, said doctors told her her baby would be born with acrania, a rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus lacks a skull. Davis said her condition meant the fetus would likely be stillborn or die within the first week of life. Doctors recommended an abortion, but were told they could not do so because of the state’s abortion ban. “Basically, they said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” Davis said as she stood with her family and civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump outside the Louisiana state Capitol on Friday. An ultrasound image of Nancy Davis’ fetus at 10 weeks. (Family brochure) Davis said her doctors were unsure whether they could legally perform the abortion because of Louisiana law, which states that abortion is prohibited except to prevent the patient’s death or in cases of “substantial risk of death due to physical condition or the prevention of serious, permanent damage to a pregnant woman’s life-sustaining organ.” According to the Louisiana Department of Health, the ban has exceptions for “medically futile” pregnancies, which include a range of fetal abnormalities. “They seemed confused about the law and afraid of what would happen to them if they had a criminal abortion,” Davis said. “Now I’m getting ready to go out of state for this procedure next week. I want you to imagine what it was like to continue this pregnancy for another six weeks after this diagnosis.” Davis said a doctor recommended an abortion and said they would do it for several thousand dollars. But then, she said, the facility’s administrator, Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, La., said they could not perform the procedure because of the overturning of Roe and Louisiana’s strict “baby termination laws.” The story continues A spokeswoman for Woman’s Hospital told CNN the hospital cannot comment on a specific patient, but said it looks at “each patient’s individual circumstances and how to stay in compliance with all applicable state laws to the best of our ability.” Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, where Davis and her family held a press conference Friday. (Chrismiceli via Wikicommons) “Because the medical team feared repercussions if they provided Ms. Davis with an abortion, she had to look out of state for safe, reliable care,” Crump said. He added that doctors fear they could face fines of more than $200,000, as well as losing their medical licenses and even facing jail or prison time. State Sen. Katrina Jackson, who has championed Louisiana’s strict abortion laws, and 35 other lawmakers said the hospital got it all wrong and “grossly misinterpreted” the law. In a statement Tuesday, they said that during this past legislative session they amended changes to a previous 2006 enabling law. “Among those changes was a medical futility exception that allows a woman to undergo a medical procedure that results in a spontaneous abortion, if she carries a child that cannot survive outside the womb.” They further stated, “Although many of us share a belief that would compel us to carry this child to full term, believing that throughout pregnancy the child’s vital organs will form, we voted for this exemption and therefore the we recognize as law”. Louisiana state senator Katrina Jackson, running in 2020, sponsored the state’s strict abortion law. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Save the Storks) The confusion surrounding the Louisiana law comes as doctors across the U.S. have expressed concern that doctors must follow strict abortion bans that are deemed vague or unclear. The issue of reproductive rights is typically divided along party lines nationally, with Republicans favoring abortion bans. But in Louisiana, Democrats are leading the charge. In 2006, it was a Louisiana Democratic senator who sponsored the “trigger bill” that would have automatically banned abortions unless the pregnancy threatened the woman’s life. Then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, signed the law long before Roe v. Wade was in serious danger of being overturned by the supreme court. In 2019, Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, signed a bill banning the abortion of “an unborn human with a detectable heartbeat.” The measure was sponsored by a Democrat, former Sen. John Milkovich. Then, also in 2019, Jackson introduced a bill that would allow Louisiana voters to decide on a constitutional amendment stating that no provision of the state constitution protects the right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion. It passed, Edwards signed it, and voters approved it in 2020. In 2019, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed a bill banning the abortion of “an unborn human with a detectable heartbeat.” (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) Jackson, a Democrat, said she asked the Louisiana Department of Health to communicate the medical futility exemption to Women’s Hospital’s lawyers, telling them the hospital could legally perform the procedure on Davis. However, Crump said the law is racist and classist, mostly affecting women of color or low-income women. Despite clarification from the state, Crump said his client plans to have the abortion elsewhere. “The attorney general has argued that the law is clear, to which we say the law is as clear as mud. Every woman’s situation is different and subject to interpretation,” Crump said in response to a reporter’s question about why Davis was leaving the State. to perform an abortion that would fall within the exception of Louisiana law. “Well, of course, medical professionals don’t want to risk jail time or having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for making the wrong call. Who would just take someone’s word for it when their freedom is at stake?” Attorney Benjamin Crump at Friday’s news conference with Davis and her family. (ABC video via AP) On her GoFundMe page, Davis said she plans to travel to North Carolina to undergo this “challenging” procedure. Her partner, Cedric Cole, who was with her at the press conference, said “dealing with the situation on the front row and seeing the impact it’s had on our family, it’s very complicated, it’s really hard … it’s so much bigger than us and our family.” “This is not fair to me and it shouldn’t happen to any other woman,” Davis added. “Being a mother starts when your baby is in the womb, not outside. Attachment and everything that comes with it. So as a mother, as a parent, it’s my responsibility to have my children’s best interests at heart.”
