On Thursday, Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN doctor herself, delivered a tearful testimony as she recounted her experiences of being forced to travel out of state for an abortion due to a nonviable pregnancy.
Eleven weeks into the pregnancy last year, Dennard, who is pregnant again, learned that her baby had anencephaly, a rare and fatal condition affecting the development of the brain and can also pose a serious health risk to the mother. Explaining the condition, Dennard said that babies “survive seconds, minutes … maybe a day. They essentially struggle for air until they pass away.”
Due to a cardiac heartbeat, Dennard was unable to obtain an abortion in Texas and thus had to look elsewhere for an abortion.
“I felt like my pregnancy was not my own, that it belonged to the state, because I no longer had a choice of what I could do. I felt abandoned. I couldn’t believe that after spending my entire life in the state, being a sixth generation Texan, practicing medicine in the state, that the state had completely turned their back on me,” Dennard said….”
