Phoebe Cohen (Mongolia) | Guest Writer for Huffington Post

I was glad he was excited. I just wanted the patient taken to the surgical center as soon as possible. I was keeping my eyes plastered to the portable monitor keeping track of her vital signs. Her vital signs showed her kissing the outer edge of hemorrhagic shock and I didn’t want her to destabilize further. I took another blood pressure reading, apologizing to the patient for the arm discomfort. Her pressure was slightly lower than it had been earlier, making me even more anxious.

“BEHAVE yourself!” I told the monitor silently, as if it was the machine’s fault that my patient had a pelvic bleed.

The trauma team was ready when we arrived at the larger hospital’s surgical center. They were gowned, booted and masked. To my relief they wasted no time transferring our patient onto a hospital stretcher and wheeling her into surgery. I talked to the nurse, typed out my own report and told the dispatch that we were available again.

Before Roe v. Wade was passed, the Guttmacher Institute estimates “the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year,” and that hundreds of women died each year from botched procedures. The true numbers will never be known because the procedures (and often disastrous consequences) were swept under the rug and never officially reported. As it will in a post-Roe world, this affected poor and otherwise marginalized women disproportionately.

I have transported women who are mentally ill, women with substance abuse issues and women who are houseless to the labor-and-delivery units of hospitals. I transported one girl, no older than 16, from a McDonald’s (where she was working) to the hospital for preterm contractions.

Being pregnant is also dangerous. I have transported women whose babies were in breech position and required lights and sirens to the nearest high-risk obstetrical surgeon. I have transported women at risk for intractable seizures due to preeclampsia. I have transported one woman with uncontrolled bleeding and possible miscarriage because her husband had beaten her.

Recently, a 2021 interview resurfaced in which GOP nominee for vice president JD Vance lamented that “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” want to ruin the country. The trope was echoed earlier this year by football player Harrison Butker, who delivered a commencement speech at Benedictine College where he castigated feminism as telling “diabolical lies,” speculating that the female graduates were likely more excited about “your marriage and the children you will bring into this world” than “successful careers.” Currently the low birth rates of millennials and Gen Z is a cause of concern among the far right. “Pronatalism” is the byword among influential right-wing voices like Elon Musk.