Mid-Michigan woman shares her story of life-saving abortion in Hertel congressional campaign ad

Stephanie Jones, a mid-Michigan professional and mother of two, shares her story of receiving lifesaving abortion care in an ad supporting former state Sen. Curtis Hertel (D-East Lansing) for Congress. | Photo courtesy of Hertel for Michigan

Stephanie Jones, 41, is a mid-Michigan professional and a mother of two. In 2016, Jones was pregnant for the second time, when an ectopic pregnancy almost cut her life short. 

“We were really excited to be pregnant for a second time. Like many young families, we were just elated and over the moon,” Jones told the Advance in an interview Wednesday.

In an ad released Thursday in support of former state Sen. Curtis Hertel’s (D-East Lansing) congressional campaign, Jones describes losing blood and losing consciousness, as her pregnancy caused her uterus to rupture. 

“If I didn’t have an abortion immediately, I would have died,” Jones said in the ad. 

Because of the federal protections surrounding abortion, Jones said she was able to access abortion care, telling the Advance that Roe v. Wade, the since-overturned Supreme Court case guaranteeing access to an abortion, had given her a second chance at life.  

“It was very touch and go, on the razor’s edge of life and death. And then once I was able to get stabilized, I spent a week in [an Intensive Care Unit] recovering from the trauma to my body,” Jones said.

“Without that abortion, my husband would have been a widower and my son would have been motherless,” she said. 

The ad only tells one part of the story, Jones said, noting that she later experienced another rare type of ectopic pregnancy that required an abortion and ended her ability to carry a child, later having her daughter through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy. 

“My life was saved, not once, but twice through abortion,” Jones said. 

“When candidates like [Hertel’s Republican opponent, former state Sen.] Tom Barrett, when they talk about abortion and access to abortion and [banning] abortion with no exceptions, what they’re talking about is my exact case. And if there were red tape involved in the process for my doctor to have the ability to save my life, I would not have survived. We are talking about the difference of seconds and minutes between life and death,” Jones said. 

Several ads supporting Democratic candidates this cycle have featured women sharing their stories about abortion and reproductive health care, including Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), who’s running against former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) for U.S. Senate.

Hertel and Barrett are squaring off in one of the most competitive congressional races in the country in Michigan’s 7th District that could be decisive in determining party control of the U.S. House. Republicans currently hold a slim majority.

Hertel has repeatedly attacked Barrett on abortion with the ad accusing Barrett of supporting a national abortion ban, pointing to a bill Barrett introduced while serving in the state Senate in 2019 which creates penalties for individuals providing a “partial-birth abortion,” including up to two years imprisonment and a fine of up to $50,000. 

Partial birth abortion is a non-medical term for a procedure called dilation and extraction (D&X), which has been banned nationally since 2003. 

Barrett’s bill would have applied the same penalties to a “dismemberment abortion” which it defines as “disarticulating limbs or decapitating the head from the fetal torso and removing the dismembered fetal body parts regardless of whether the fetal body parts are removed by the same instrument, device, or object or by suction or other means.”

Barrett also joined Republicans in the Legislature in supporting a failed attempt to reinstate Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban. Michigan voters in 2022 passed a constitutional amendment, Proposal 3, guaranteeing abortion rights.

While Barrett still opposes abortion, his campaign strategist Jason Roe previously told the Advance that Barrett “does not believe Congress has the authority to override the will of the people of Michigan, and only they can amend the changes resulting from Proposal 3.” 

According to Roe, Barrett’s priority in Congress would be focused on preserving the Hyde amendment — which bans the use of federal funds for abortion, only allowing exceptions to pay for terminating pregnancies that endanger the life of the pregnant person or that result from rape or incest — and ensuring nonprofit crisis pregnancy centers continue to receive government funding. 

Barrett has also told the Detroit Free Press he sees a role for Congress in ensuring doctors aren’t forced to perform abortion procedures in violation of their own consciences and minors aren’t transported over state lines to receive an abortion without parental consent as well as working to make adoption a more acceptable alternative to abortion. 

Jones said voters should look to Barrett’s respect for the issue and respect for women, referencing an interview with the Washington Examiner where he discussed his decision to launch his second bid to represent Michigan’s 7th Congressional District after his 2022 loss to Slotkin in what was billed as one of the most expensive races in the nation.

In the interview, Barrett downplayed the possibility that abortion would remain an intense issue in the 2024 election cycle. 

“My opponent is not a woman. He does not have the depth of resources that Slotkin had. The top of the ticket should be far more competitive. The abortion proposal, which dominated the race and every race in America seemingly two years ago, is not on the ballot in Michigan this year,” Barrett told the Examiner in reflecting on his 2022 loss. “In addition to that, I feel like the same issues that we were really highlighting in 2022 — cost of living, energy, national security, the border, crime, all of these things — are as bad or worse today as they were in 2022.”

Jones disagreed. 

“[Barrett] feels it’s an insignificant issue that people are not concerned about and that it doesn’t matter because his opponent is not a woman. And I would tell you my husband, who watched his wife nearly die and was really facing the idea that he was going to be raising our son on his own; my father, who you know as a retired UAW worker, watched his daughter nearly die without access to an abortion, not once, but twice. I would beg to differ that it does matter, even though he’s not running against a woman,” she said. 

Jones noted that while she was given a second chance to share her story, for every story that is shared there are hundreds that go untold. 

“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories that people are not sharing because they’re still too traumatized, too scared to talk about. And that is we just need to remember that, because it is not a one off rarity. This is happening, you know, frequently in our state and across our country, and we just need to remind ourselves of that,” Jones said.