Five plaintiffs, including three women from northwest Arkansas, have filed suit against the state. The suit claims that the state's near-total ban on abortion violates their state constitutional rights. Emily Waldorf of Fayetteville is the first name on the suit. In a press briefing yesterday, Waldorf says she joined the suit because she didn't want this to keep happening to other women in Arkansas.
"It's been 15 months since everything happened to me, and in my mind, I think about how many other women this has happened to, and how many more women in Arkansas are going to have to lose their life before us. Storytellers come forth and say, I went through a very traumatic event because of these abortion bans, and I don't think that we can change without each other."
Waldorf's water broke at 17 weeks pregnant, which brought her to the emergency room. She says while she was in the hospital, she had repeated conversations with attorneys and doctors about if and when she could legally have an abortion.
"The day that I was admitted, I was told by more than one physician, our hands are tied behind our back. I even had one physician tell me, tell your friends to vote differently."
She says at one point while she was in the hospital, she called Governor Sanders' office directly to ask what she should do.
“Because at that point I felt like I was a true ticking time bomb. And we spoke with the governor's office, I believe once on the phone, for sure, that's whenever they told me that I needed to seek legal advice and that they couldn't and wouldn't help me, and they told me that they would call me back and I have not heard anything back from them."
Ozarks at Large reached out to the governor's office for comment on the lawsuit and to ask about this conversation. Her office did not respond to our request.
Theresa Van of Fort Smith is another plaintiff. When she was 22 weeks pregnant, she learned that she had no amniotic fluid, which meant that if she had made it full term, the baby would not survive delivery.
She says she wishes more people understood that what happened to her is not uncommon.
"My diagnosis was not a rare condition. It can literally happen to anyone and my baby was very much wanted. Something that we had planned and we were, you know, hoping to give my daughter a sibling."
In October, the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life named Arkansas the most pro-life state in America for the sixth year in a row. Data from Arkansas Department of Health indicates that the state has the worst maternal mortality rate in the nation, and the third worst infant mortality rate.
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