These Columbus women are pushing back against the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling
Heather Herring and her mother Leslie Lanning protested the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in downtown Columbus on June 30.
Speakers stood on the concrete stage on Broadway, delivering calls for action and sharing their reasons for abortion-rights. Dressed in a gray t-shirt and oversized sunglasses, Herring took the microphone and sat on the stage steps, drawing the eyes of everyone attending the protest.
“I’m gonna talk to y’all about my personal experience,” she said. “If I cry, don’t judge me now.”
Herring tearfully told the crowd how she and Lanning experienced traumatic pregnancies, which ultimately motivated the mother-daughter duo to become activists in women’s health care, fighting for safe access to abortion.
‘Is there any way to save it?’
When Lanning gave birth to Herring’s younger sister, Hailey, she decided she didn’t want any more children. Lanning didn’t believe that her now ex-husband would be able to support more than two children, so she decided to get her tubes tied in 2000.
Five years later, Lanning found out she was pregnant, even though she thought this was impossible for her.
It was an ectopic pregnancy.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when an embryo grows outside of the womb, and it always ends in pregnancy loss. About 1 in 50 pregnancies in the United States are ectopic, according to the March of Dimes.
The pain sent Lanning to the emergency room where she learned about her ectopic pregnancy and that it had ruptured. She was bleeding internally, and was scheduled for an emergency surgery to terminate the unsafe pregnancy and remove a fallopian tube.
Shock prevented her from immediately processing exactly what was happening.
Lanning had never expected to find herself in this situation after getting her tubes tied. But once she came to terms with the fact that she was pregnant, Lanning laid in her hospital bed and cried.
“Is there any way to save it?” she asked her doctor.
There wasn’t.
Nothing was wrong with the zygote, Lanning said, and she believes that if doctors weren’t allowed to have terminated the pregnancy then she would have bled to death.
Herring was 7 years old when this occurred, and all she understood was that her mom was in the hospital for a few days and came home with staples in her stomach.
“There was a baby,” Herring was told. “And now there’s not.”
Lanning had no idea Herring would have her own difficulties with pregnancy over a decade later.
‘I wanted that child’
Herring always wanted to be a mom.
She was excited when she got pregnant at 20 years old. Herring found out about the pregnancy when she was 10 weeks along, and her first doctor’s appointment went well. Everything seemed to be progressing as normal, she said.
It was her first pregnancy, so Herring told anyone who would listen.
“I wanted that child,” she said.
Lanning went to her daughter’s doctor’s appointment when Herring was 12 weeks pregnant. Herring and her boyfriend, Steven, were happily talking about the baby, but Lanning couldn’t stop watching the ultrasound.
“I could see there was no heartbeat,” Lanning said. “I knew before (my daughter) did.”
The doctor confirmed Herring was having a miscarraige. Since there weren’t any signs of infection or that the miscarraige could pose a danger to Herring’s life, the doctor did not prescribe any medication for when the fetus passed.
But three weeks later, when she was 15 weeks pregnant, Herring was running a fever of over 102 degrees while screaming in pain on the toilet as the fetus evacuated.
Steven was on the phone with Lanning, panicking about what to do and how to help his girlfriend. The ambulance arrived after an hour of suffering through the miscarraige.
“I was so out of it,” Herring said. “I don’t remember the ambulance ride. I don’t remember being at the hospital.”
When she became aware of her surroundings again, her mother was sitting next to her in the Midtown Medical Center (now known as Piedmont Columbus Regional).
In the following weeks and months, Herring worked through the emotions losing her baby had caused – and it was not an easy toll. It was two weeks before she could return to her job at a local grocery store, and she still thinks about the child who would’ve been 8 years old today had she been able to carry the baby to term.
When Herring got pregnant again with her daughter Briley, 5, she was more cautious about letting people know. She waited until she was 15 weeks pregnant, before surprising Lanning with an ultrasound picture of the baby.
Briley is “my heart sitting outside my body,” Lanning said.
Activism is a family affair
Lanning’s and Herring’s experiences motivate their resolve to protest the Supreme Court’s ruling because they fear other women will be prosecuted for not being able to carry to term.
The term “spontaneous abortion” is used interchangeably with “miscarriage” in medical terminology, Herring said. She worries what the court ruling may mean for other women who experience an early loss of pregnancy, especially if they are accused of having an abortion or acting in a way that could have potentially harmed their fetus.
“Your body is literally doing what it’s supposed to do to protect you,” Herring said. “And going on trial for that is wrong.”
Herring and Lanning are both concerned the women who have miscarriages might have to relive their trauma again in the court system as their medical information is shared widely, so they can prove they were not responsible for being unable to carry to term.
Lanning has always been pro-choice, she said. While she wouldn’t choose abortion for herself, she always believed that it should be available for others.
“It never occured to me to consider that it is a life-saving procedure until I had mine,” Lanning said.
Her ectopic pregnancy reinforced her belief in access to safe abortions and made her want to fight for it.
Lanning got involved in activism when former President Donald Trump began running for office. She started canvassing for the Democratic Party before getting involved with the organization Indivisible Columbus.
Being politically active runs in the family, Herring said, because her grandmother, June, is also actively involved.
June is helping Lanning and Ilene Kent plan another event in October as part of Indivisible Columbus. It will be right before the election, Lanning said, so the 14th Amendment and equal protection will be on the ballot.
Lanning and Herring attended another demonstration on July 4 and brought Briley with them.
Herring has spoken with her daughter about why they’ve been protesting and what people are upset about, she said. Briley doesn’t like it when her cousins tell her what to do, Herring said, so why should people who don’t know her tell her what to do.
Briley was excited to hold up her sign at the July 4 protest.
“I’m alive,” Briley’s sign reads. “Protect me.”
