When Eva Burch learned that her pregnancy was not progressing and decided to have an abortion, Burch and her husband quickly made another decision: Burch, who is a Democratic state senator in Arizona, was going to speak up about it – from the floor of the state senate.
On Monday, as her voice shook and a group of women surrounded her, Burch gave a 10-minute speech about her decision and the struggle to navigate Arizona’s “coercive” maze of abortion restrictions. With her speech, Burch joined the ranks of women who have spoken out since the fall of Roe v Wade about their battles to get abortions even for nonviable pregnancies.
Yet Burch, who was still pregnant when she spoke on the floor as well as during an interview, is believed to be the first pregnant state lawmaker to go into such detail about her plans to get an abortion since Roe’s demise.
“If I can take this sad situation that I find myself in and make it actionable, help get people engaged, help people to turn out to vote, help people to care about this and to pay attention to their local governments – where so many of these decisions are being made – then it’s worth it to me,” Burch said. “In spite of the tragedy of it.”
Burch, who has two young sons, has experienced infertility for years. She was not trying to get pregnant – but when she discovered she was, Burch and her husband were happy and hopeful.
That happiness would dissolve as tests revealed Burch’s pregnancy was not advancing and would end in a miscarriage, Burch said. She had experienced a miscarriage two years earlier and knew immediately she would prefer to have an abortion.
Arizona bans abortion after 15 weeks, without exceptions for rape or incest. Burch was well below that limit, but still, she said, she had to overcome an obstacle course to get care.
Arizona law mandates that patients visit an abortion clinic for counseling 24 hours before undergoing the procedure. Although Burch said she had already received an ultrasound and did not need another, she said she still had to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, which involves inserting a wand into a patient’s vagina. State law also required Burch’s provider to read a statement to her about alternatives to abortion.
“Some of the statements read to me, for example, advised me that there are alternatives to abortion, including adoption or parenting, which in my case is particularly unfair and unkind and cruel, since parenting is an option I would love to take on,” Burch said. “The intent is clear: they don’t want to make sure that it is accurate and appropriate care. They want patients to make a different decision. They want patients to make a decision that the legislators feel more comfortable with.”
Notably, Arizona’s abortion laws remain up in the air. In 1864, before Arizona became a state, its territorial government enacted a near-total abortion ban that only permits abortions to save a patient’s life. While Roe was the law of the land, that ban went dormant; in 2022, legislators passed the 15-week abortion ban, which Roe also blocked from taking effect.
When Roe fell, confusion broke out over whether the near-total ban or the 15-week ban was in effect; amid the chaos, all abortion providers in the state temporarily shut down as courts warred over the two bans. The state supreme court is now weighing whether to reinstate the near-total ban.
Burch was nearly caught up in that upheaval. In June 2022, she became pregnant with another nonviable pregnancy and scheduled an abortion. The night before, Burch recalled, she started to bleed heavily and went to the emergency department. There, she learned that providers could no longer detect any activity from the tissue that would – in a healthy pregnancy – ultimately become a heart. But a doctor there refused to perform an abortion because, Burch said, she was not bleeding heavily enough.
“They had offered to give me some medication to make me start bleeding again and said if I bled enough, I could have had a procedure there in the hospital,” said Burch, who is also a nurse practitioner and has worked in a women’s health clinic. “That sounded awful.”
Instead, she underwent her abortion at a clinic the next day.
Burch’s ordeal unfolded just two weeks before the US supreme court overturned Roe and Arizona clinics shut down.
“Had the situation taken place two weeks later, I wouldn’t have been able to go access that care,” Burch said. “If I had needed to have an abortion, I would have had to leave the state to do it.”
She continued: “This time around, I knew what to expect. I went in there eyes wide open. But it doesn’t make it any easier. The laws here are not going to become palatable here because patients know what’s coming. We just deserve better care than what we’re getting.”
Abortion-rights supporters in Arizona are now gathering signatures for a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Advocates in roughly a dozen states are hoping to put abortion rights on the ballot come November; so far, every time Americans have directly voted on post-Roe abortion rights, abortion-rights supporters have won.
Because Arizona is an anticipated swing state in the 2024 elections, the push for the ballot measure – which Democrats also hope will boost turnout amid lackluster support for Joe Biden – is sure to attract nationwide attention.
“I absolutely hope that by sharing my story,” Burch said, “we can move the needle for voters in November.”
