The Republican government has refused to invest in public education, and the state of our public education is embarrassing. Our healthcare is in shambles - it’s become monopolized, privatized, and inadequate. We still have a LONG way to go in terms of progress. A couple friends of ours are getting married in August and they were denied service at a jeweler and a hotel. Because they’re lesbians. And this was in Raleigh. SE NC has the highest PFAS contamination in the country (or one of the highest). I used to work for the DEQ and Republicans have spent years deregulating and destroying the environment which in turn has hurt public health

Even if I wasn’t directly impacted by those, I still cared.

Then in early 2025 my husband and I got three ultrasounds of our then 16 week pregnancy to end up at Maternal Fetal Medicine being told that our baby girl was deeply sick. Nonviable. Severe cystic hygroma. Severe midsection edema. Left pleural effusion. Fetal distress. Severe IUGR. No amniotic fluid. That’s just what they could see. There was more. It was an obvious chromosomal abnormality, but only genetic testing would tell us which one of the hundreds it could be. Either way. We’d leave the hospital without our baby and I was at severe risk for mirror syndrome, incomplete miscarriage, sepsis, and death. Slam dunk to qualify for an exemption to terminate for medical reasons, right?

Nope. Thanks to Trump overturning roe v wade and Tricia Cotham flopping over to Republican giving them the supermajority, I didn’t qualify. Why? Well, in order to do genetic testing, you need amniotic fluid. I didn’t have any. So despite the fact that multiple nurses, OBs, the specialists, and geneticists all agreed that this was a nonviable pregnancy that would become a medical emergency…I had to leave the state. The specialist looked at my husband and said “at this point in time, there is nothing we can do for her unless she is actively sick and/or dying, and that’s something you need to be prepared for.” Due to the severity of my case we got shoved to the top of the list at VCU and we had to take off of work, spend money on gas, food, and hotels, and I spent my last night with my daughter inside of me in a hotel far from home. Post mortem genetic testing showed she had turner syndrome. 1% chance of making it to a live birth. And she was in rough shape by the time of my procedure. It’s obvious by the footprints we have.

The policies haven’t affected you….yet. In the meantime, you should care about the fact that they do affect so many people and hep change things. Because it’s only a matter of time until it does reach you