Texas Woman Who Nearly Died From Abortion Ban Featured in Searing New Harris Ad

“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life," Ondrea says in the ad, blaming Donald Trump for Texas' abortion laws.

By Kylie Cheung | October 25, 2024 | 2:00pm

Photo: Screenshot Abortion Politics Abortion Rights

Texas Woman Who Nearly Died From Abortion Ban Featured in Searing New Harris Ad

We’re 10 days away from Election Day, and Kamala Harris is making her final pitch to voters in the consistently red state of Texas. Harris will appear alongside Beyoncé at a Friday evening rally in Houston that will reportedly focus on the perils of the state’s total abortion ban. On Thursday, her campaign released a two-minute spot, featuring a Texas woman named Ondrea, who shares how she almost died as a result of Texas’ abortion. The ad includes photos of Ondrea’s open wounds on the operating table and the remaining scarring.

Texas’ abortion ban offers a narrow, vague exception to save the pregnant person’s life. But because doctors face the threat of life in prison, and because pregnancy complications are time-sensitive and rarely straightforward, patients like Ondrea, whose water broke at 16 weeks, can still be denied emergency abortion care. “Because I live in Texas, I was denied the abortion care I needed, despite being told that my daughter would not survive,” Ondrea says in the ad. “I was terrified. And I just had to wait.”

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Not long after losing her daughter, things took a turn for the worse. “I was robbed a chance to grieve, because immediately after her birth, I was in the worst pain of my life,” she says. “I’d developed a massive septic infection and I went from burying my daughter to fighting for my life. … I remember thinking just ‘God allow me to be peaceful when I go.'”

The ad then cuts to audio of Trump declaring, “First of all, I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade and I’m proud to have done it,” as well as his 2016 comment that “there has to be some form of punishment” for people who have abortions. The ad simultaneously features graphic images of Ondrea’s open wounds as she underwent surgery. “Even though my wound is physically closed now, there are a lot of parts of me that still feel open,” she says through tears. Ondrea’s husband, Cesar, mourns that “now we may never ever get to be pregnant again.”

In September, the Gender Equity Policy Institute reported that maternal deaths in the state increased by a staggering 56% between 2019 and 2022, compared to an 11% increase nationwide during the same time period. “There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” the organization’s president told NBC. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban [SB 8, which took effect in September 2021] as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” The data also showed glaring racial disparities: The maternal mortality rate among white women in Texas doubled from 20 deaths per 100,000 to 39.1. Among Black women, like Ondrea, the maternal mortality rate spiked from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births.

Ondrea is one of over two dozen Texas women who have shared their harrowing experiences of being denied emergency abortions under the state’s laws. In March 2023, a group of these women sued the state, arguing the medical exception attached to the abortion ban is too ambiguous. Like Ondrea, lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski recounted almost dying of sepsis after being denied a timely emergency abortion for her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy; she survived, but her future fertility was severely impaired because one of her fallopian tubes permanently closed. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the women’s lawsuit in May.

“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life,” Ondrea says in the ad. “I almost died because I was denied a medical abortion. … If these laws continue, it will cost more lives.”