Representative Cori Bush Says Abortionist Went Through with Procedure Against Her Will

In an interview with PBS’s Margaret Hoover, Representative Cori Bush (D., Mo.), one of the most progressive members of the House of Representatives, told the story of her second abortion, which she says was performed against her will at the age of 19.

Bush said that as she arrived at the clinic, she “was thinking back to the first abortion, ‘Okay, you’ve done this before, you know the rooms, you know what it looks like, you know what it feels like in this place, you know what to expect, you know that you may experience even so harm or some in this space.’ Like, I thought I was ready.”

But the congresswoman said that right before the procedure began, she began to have second thoughts. “I lay there and I started to think, well, one, I didn’t tell the father that that was about to happen, and I just, I just felt like I needed more time,” remembered Bush.

“So I said ‘No, you know what, I’m not ready.’ And the nurse just, you know, wouldn’t listen to me. And I said ‘No, I’m not ready.’ And as I’m saying ‘No,’ they continue to pull the instruments and you know, get everything ready. And it was just like ‘No, calm down, No, you’re going to be okay,'” she continued.

“They absolutely ignored me, even to the point of, you know, like, ‘Calm down’ as if I was the problem,” recalled Bush, who said that she continued to tell the staff  “no,” as they performed the procedure itself.

The congresswoman attributed the ignoring of her pleas, in part, to racism, telling Hoover that “I was a young black woman, you know. Multiple times I felt like it was ‘Oh, well we know better. You don’t know what you need. You don’t understand. We know better.'”

Bush supports the codification of Roe v. Wade into federal law, as well as the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions. She called the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “disgraceful,” and has cited her first abortion, which was performed after she became pregnant after being raped, as part of her reasoning.

“I was 17 when I had to make that decision. It was the result of a rape… I don’t know where I’d be right now if I ended up having the child of my rapist,” said Bush this summer.

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