Carmen

Idaho Mom

Carmen knows all too well that little miracles can come with a lot of loss. Her two-year-old daughter, Lucy, is only here after a long string of heartbreaking miscarriages. These unintentional losses, like her first nine-month-old stillbirth at age 19, required extraction and read as “abortion” on medical records.

After happily conceiving when trying for her second child, she woke up one day last winter in intense pain, heavily bleeding. Due to Idaho’s strict abortion law, instead of getting adequate healthcare, she entered a bureaucratic nightmare of shuffling legal paperwork, treatment advice, and hospitals. She endured a grueling 19-day-long miscarriage that nearly killed her. This injustice drew the spotlight of multiple national news outlets.

“You're supposed to shoulder it, keep going, be strong. And that's a lot of what Idaho [is about], you know, love each other, be friendly. We've spread that message of just let people be people. They're different. It's fine. See, there's a difference between compliance and complacency. We've reached the point as Idahoans that we are complacent to other people suffering, and we're not looking.”