Austin couple Amanda and Josh Zurawski put a Texas face on Monday to defend abortion access when they took the stage on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.
In an introductory video, Amanda emotionally described the pregnancy complications that almost certainly meant the death of her daughter, Willow. Despite this, she said, doctors refused to treat her because of the state’s strict abortion ban that went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Instead, Zurawski was sent home to wait, and days later ended up back in the hospital with an infection that nearly killed her and threatened her fertility. She and other Texas women sued the state, arguing the law endangered their health.
The video included a clip of former President Donald Trump proudly claiming responsibility for overturning the Roe v. Wade decision.
“I almost died because doctors were forced to follow Trump’s abortion ban,” Zurawski said in the video, in which Vice President Kamala Harris also promised to sign a law protecting access to abortion across the country.
Amanda and Josh Zurawski then spoke live on stage about the fear they had felt, saying a second Trump term could lead to further restrictions on access to abortion.
“We must vote as if lives depended on it, because they do,” said Amanda Zurawski.
At this week’s convention in Chicago, Democrats are likely to rely primarily on their promises to protect abortion rights as the party rallies behind Harris as their newly nominated candidate.
Democrats accuse Trump of being responsible for strict abortion restrictions or outright bans in many states because he nominated three conservative judges to the Supreme Court who laid the foundation for the overturning of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
According to the Gutmacher Institute, Texas is one of 14 states that ban abortion.
Texas has a medical emergency exemption that allows an abortion to save the life of a pregnant person or to reduce the risk of significant impairment of a major bodily function, but critics say the language is so vague that it puts women like Zurawski at risk.
Zurawski took the stage on Monday evening with two women whose traumatic pregnancy experiences were also an issue in the Democratic campaign: Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana and Hadley Duvall of Kentucky.
Joshua, who appeared in a Biden ad, blamed Louisiana’s abortion ban for her being turned away from two emergency rooms despite suffering a miscarriage.
Duvall spoke next, telling how she became pregnant at age 12 after being raped by her stepfather.
“That was the first time I was told I had options,” she said. “I can’t imagine not having a choice, but today, because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country.”
Zurawski has already told her story in several forums, testified on Capitol Hill and participated in the 2023 State of the Union address as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden.
Zurawski was also lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state brought by Texas women who said they were denied or delayed abortions because of the state’s restrictions on medical emergencies.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled against her in May, overturning a lower court ruling that would have exempted such pregnancies from state law.
The Biden team released a commercial in April featuring Zurawski sobbing over the loss of Willow. The ad ended with the words, “Donald Trump did this.”
Trump said he was “proud to be the person responsible” for overturning the Roe decision and that abortion rights should be determined by the states.
He has shown that he is aware of his potential vulnerability on the issue. Republicans revised their official platform at his urging to remove language about a national abortion ban. During his lengthy acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, he did not mention the issue of abortion once.
Abortion was also a major issue in the elections for the next three seats, such as in U.S. Representative Colin Allred’s challenge to Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Allred (Dallas Democrat) criticized Cruz’s support for abortion restrictions and highlighted stories like Zurawski’s, saying the path to restoring federal abortion rights is to defeat Cruz.
Cruz responded that Democrats had lost touch with reality by refusing to support restrictions on abortion.
The issue of reproductive rights will also be a focus of the convention this week, even off the stage. A mobile health center from Planned Parenthood will be located near the convention, offering free medical abortions and vasectomies. A 18-foot IUD will also be on display.
In his podcast on Monday, Cruz pointed to the offer of free abortions as evidence that the Democratic Party has strayed far from former President Bill Clinton’s statement that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” and has instead become “zealots” on the issue.
“This shows how extreme the Democratic Party has become,” Cruz said.
