In earlier columns I shared the stories of Emily Waldorf and Danielle Richardson. Danielle and her pediatrician husband went through IVF to conceive and were thrilled to find out they were having a baby. Every ultrasound showed the pregnancy was perfect, until one at 15 weeks revealed their baby had no kidneys. She was given no chance of survival and was already dying inside the womb.

Because of Arkansas abortion law, Danielle was told she would have to carry the baby to term, or until she miscarried on her own. She had to fly to another state where abortion is legal to end the nightmare. She and her husband moved away from Arkansas after that because they could not bear to face the same possibility if they became pregnant again. Nor did they want to raise a child in a place with such conditions.

In 2024, when Emily was 17 weeks pregnant with her second child, she began bleeding. She went to her local hospital, Washington Regional in Fayetteville, and doctors there found her amniotic sac and baby's foot bulging from her cervix. She was diagnosed with cervical insufficiency. The told her she would most certainly lose her baby, but that legally there was nothing they could do until her life was in danger.

She lay in the hospital for five days waiting for her baby's heart to stop or her own blood to become septic enough to be considered life-threatening. Under Arkansas law, one or the other had to happen before doctors could induce labor. Finally, with help from family and friends, she traveled 240 miles in an ambulance for an abortion in Kansas.

Emily and six others, including one obstetrician, sued the state in February, and the state filed to dismiss their case. A hearing was held Sept. 28 in Pulaski County Circuit Court, with Judge Cara Connors........

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