U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) says hospital staff hesitated to treat her ectopic pregnancy last year. She says they were scared of breaking the state’s abortion law.
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Cammack said that during a medical emergency in May 2024, doctors at the ER stalled before giving her a necessary injection.
The medication, methotrexate, is often used to treat ectopic pregnancies, which are life-threatening and non-viable.
But Cammack claims staff were afraid of facing legal consequences under Florida’s strict abortion laws.
“It was fear, not the law”
According to Cammack, she was five weeks pregnant and at serious risk.
Though there was no heartbeat, and the pregnancy wasn’t viable, it reportedly took hours before doctors agreed to administer the drug. She says they were worried about losing their licenses—or worse, being jailed.
But Cammack, who co-chairs the House Pro-Life Caucus and opposes abortion rights, doesn’t blame the state’s six-week ban.
Instead, she says the problem is with abortion rights advocates who, in her words, have “scared” healthcare providers into inaction.
“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” she told the Journal. She added that while some may use her story to argue in favor of abortion access, she doesn’t see it that way.
“There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she said.
Florida’s law and what it actually says
The state’s abortion ban went into effect on May 1, 2024. It prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with a few exceptions—including for life-threatening conditions and cases of rape or incest within the first trimester.
Still, the penalties for violating the ban are severe: up to five years in prison, thousands in fines, and potential loss of medical licenses.
What do netizens think?
Cammack’s story made its way to Reddit, where users on the r/LeopardsAteMyFace subreddit had some strong reactions.
The subreddit title is a reference to a satirical phrase—“I never thought leopards would eat my face”—which mocks people who support harmful policies or political movements, only to be negatively affected by them later.
“Knowing people like her have kids and raise them to be the next generation of insanity for the world to deal with makes me feel like we’re never going to get beyond this moment in time,” one person wrote. “I hope we can. But damn are some people just idiots.”
“In a red state, she blames the left,” another said. “I’ll tell you what, it’s gonna get a lot worse for her. Thoughts and Tariffs.”
“So instead of taking accountability and realizing that the party she voted for are pieces of [expletive] she blames the left? Smh,” someone else added.
“As excruciatingly painful as this is, I don’t feel bad for her,” a fourth shared. “She chose to subject other women to this awful experience and when it happened to her, she chose to turn it into a political statement against the very people she fought against who wanted treatment available for anyone in this exact situation.”
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