Mom of 5 Tells Congress How She ‘Almost Lost Her Life’ Taking Abortion Medication

When St. Louis activist and pro-choice storyteller Rev. Dr. Love Holt attempted a self-managed abortion, she nearly lost her life. Now, she will never stop telling her story.

On July 17, 2023, Holt stood before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, determined to speak up for individuals who face life-threatening struggles due to abortion bans, HuffPost reported. The mother of five gave a chilling account of Jan. 20, when she took a medication abortion pill and was rushed to the hospital for severe blood loss. She told committee members that she was more worried about going to jail than about her own survival.

“I nodded in and out of consciousness in the lobby for several minutes as blood began dripping down my legs,” Holt said. “I told myself to make sure you tell the staff that you’re having a miscarriage, but I knew I was having one.”

In Missouri there is a united front that is fighting for all right of all state residents to choose abortion. Missouri became the first state in the country to make providing abortion a criminal offense in June 2022, minutes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a result, many residents may have no choice but to employ riskier measures to gain access to abortion.

“Forcing people to carry unwanted pregnancies drives people into further positions of poverty, and poverty gives birth to violence and survival modes that make people unpredictable, and they do things that they would normally not do, like me,” Holt said Monday.

Born and raised in Berkeley, North County St. Louis, Holt is an abortion doula, an herbal womb practitioner, and a cultural competency consultant. She currently serves as a community engagement manager at Abortion Action Missouri, an organization working toward stigma-free abortion access and reproductive freedom.

“They understand that there has to be somebody on the adverse side. And they want it to be everyone but them,” she said. “But that will never stop me from telling my story until the day I die.”

On Jan. 20, Holt was about 13 weeks and six days pregnant. Medication abortion is generally considered to be a safe option for those who want to end their pregnancies outside of a medical setting. Planned Parenthood, however, recommends that an in-clinic abortion should be performed if it has been more than 12 weeks since the first day of a woman’s last period.

Before taking the abortion pill, Holt experienced some delays. The first order was stolen in the mail, and she had to reorder them to complete the set of two pills. She described experiencing heavy bleeding, cramping and blood clots within the first 45 minutes. Those harrowing symptoms caused her to become lightheaded. She’d been hiding away in her car so that her children wouldn’t witness her trauma. Eventually, the kids called their grandmother, who would be the one to find her daughter unresponsive and drenched in blood.

Holt was rushed to a nearby Catholic-led hospital, where she underwent a “dilatation-and-curettage surgical procedure” and witnessed events that she said “sickened” her. She was not only offered a “death certificate” but can also attest to being “forced to participate in having my tissues in a mass grave with a headstone.”

“I almost lost my life that day,” she told congress. “I would have left my children, my Black children, alone in this cruel, cold world to navigate it alone. Nobody to protect them, nobody to support them.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a member of the oversight committee, was in attendance at the meeting and spoke of the importance of Holt’s account.

“These are the stories that we need to hear more of in hearings in Congress, because the reality is that Rev. Dr. Holt’s story is not an anomaly,” Bush told HuffPost. “Rather, it represents the reality of so many people struggling to terminate their pregnancies in states that have banned or severely limited access to abortion care.”