(LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida is speaking out after an interviewer publicized details of her ectopic pregnancy she had asked to be kept private while dealing with death threats and responding to how the abortion lobby distorted the facts of her ordeal to serve a pro-abortion agenda.
Cammack, co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, told the story last year in a Wall Street Journal interview of being taken to an emergency room in May 2024, at imminent risk of death, yet doctors and nurses hesitated to administer methotrexate to help expel her miscarried baby out of fear of violating Florida’s then-new Heartbeat Protection Law, which bans most abortions starting around six weeks. She was given the drug “hours” later.
On June 21 of this year, Tara Palmeri published a new interview with Cammack revisiting the story (among other topics) under the provocative title, “What Happens When a Pro-Life Congresswoman Needs an Abortion?” Three days later, Cammack responded with an X article addressing the “Lies That Followed” her story.
“She then told me she was going to air it on Father’s Day. The first Father’s Day my family would experience since our rainbow baby was born,” the congresswoman began. “I asked her to hold off on publishing that portion of the interview for security reasons. I told her the specifics in detail. She didn’t care. She denied my request, saying the story was ‘in the public interest.’ Fine. Then let’s tell the whole story.”
Cammack said she has received “hundreds of death threats” since first telling her story, including “one man who made specific threats against my family (who) skipped his court date. Law enforcement cannot find him. They are still looking for him.” She then shared a sampling of new threats she has received since Palmeri’s interview. “I never asked her to cut that portion — just to delay until the found this guy who threatened my family. Again, she didn’t care. She chose clicks.”
Cammack then explained that she suffered a cornual ectopic pregnancy, hemorrhaging before she even knew she was pregnant and quickly confirming doctors could not find a heartbeat. “One physician explained that if rupture occurred, the window to save my life could be measured in minutes,” she said. “Not hours. Minutes. They told me my baby had died.”
She went on to clarify that ectopic pregnancy treatment “has never been classified as an abortion” anywhere in any state or federal law or medical standards, and in fact Planned Parenthood itself used to admit “Treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing as getting an abortion” before the fall of Roe v. Wade.
She then showed that Florida law never prevented the life-saving treatment she needed, and in fact “contained explicit protections for treatment of ectopic pregnancies and medical emergencies threatening the life of the mother.” Cammack attributes her doctors’ hesitation not to the law itself but to a “pro-abortion group spen(ding) millions geofencing false ads around Florida’s hospitals, telling doctors and nurses they’d face criminal prosecution for treating miscarriages and ectopics. The nurse treating me showed me one of those ads on her phone. It was a lie.”
“I never spoke to Governor DeSantis,” she added. “I never spoke to anyone on his team. I received no special treatment. None. Ever.” (The original WSJ story says Cammack “said she called the governor’s office late at night for help, but no one picked up,” which Palmeri later misrepresents as “She described contacting Governor Ron DeSantis’ office for legal advice while hemorrhaging.”)
“We need a national conversation about miscarriages, stillbirths, and ectopic pregnancies — what they are, what they aren’t, and what real gaps in maternal and prenatal health care look like,” the congresswoman concluded. “We need real solutions. Not clickbait bullshit that does nothing to help women and babies in every corner of the country.”
Palmeri responded on her Substack, claiming the lawmaker’s account was “not what happened.”
“This portion of the interview was given on the record. No conditions regarding publication were discussed before or during the interview,” she wrote. “Shortly after the recording concluded, my producer, Abi Baker, was contacted by her public relations adviser Aaron Evans, who raised several concerns,” including “that the congresswoman had not anticipated being asked about the circumstances surrounding her previously public account of her pregnancy. Later that afternoon, at 2:21 p.m., Evans connected Cammack and me directly by phone. It is this conversation that has now become the subject of public disagreement.”
Palmeri acknowledges that Cammack raised concerns about threats she had been receiving over the subject but maintains her “contemporaneous notes from that conversation do not reflect a proposal to delay publication until a suspect was apprehended and then proceed with publication. Instead, my notes reflect a request that the interview not be published because of ongoing safety concerns, together with a discussion about the possibility of sitting down again in the future after she had completed additional work in what she described as ‘the women’s healthcare space.’” She also quotes Cammack as saying, “I don’t personally feel very good about it being presented in the same situation as Epstein to be candid,” a topic that was also discussed in the interview.
Crucially, Palmeri does not address any of Cammack’s points about ectopic pregnancies or the truth about Florida’s pro-life laws.
Data shows that fewer than five percent of abortions are sought for rape, incest, or medical emergencies despite the abortion lobby’s attempts to use the most emotionally trying circumstances to keep all abortions legal.
While some emergency situations in pregnancy can necessitate treatments that indirectly and unintentionally result in a child’s death, numerous pro-life doctors (including former abortionists) attest that direct abortion is always unnecessary to save a mother’s life, and in fact abortion would often be the worst thing that could be done for the mother in a genuine emergency, as it often takes longer than actual treatment or even delivery, and can introduce new medical complications for a doctor to contend with.
Regardless, every state in the union with abortion prohibitions currently in effect also permits doctors to administer life-saving, non-abortive treatment to pregnant women even if it comes at the expense of a baby’s life.
Pro-abortion activists have long sought to keep abortion debates focused on such situations, to divert attention from the vast majority of abortions that are sought for far less “sympathetic” reasons. They have gotten mileage out of that approach, which has helped defeat pro-lifers in numerous state ballot referendums and convinced national Republicans to take a more “moderate” stance on life.