She was the first Pa. state senator to give birth while in office. Now she is grieving a pregnancy loss

PHILADELPHIA -- Just over a week ago, State Sen. Amanda Cappelletti learned that her nearly 10-week-old fetus did not have the electrical activity needed to become a heartbeat.

Cappelletti would need a dilation and evacuation procedure to prevent complications from allowing her nonviable pregnancy to end on its own. She had the abortion last Monday, just a week before Election Day.

The Democrat from Montgomery County made history last year as the first sitting state senator to give birth while in office to her now-19-month-old daughter Taglia McQuiston, and she has been open about two previous miscarriages.

Now, just days before voters go to the polls Tuesday with abortion access a decisive issue for voters, Cappelletti is coming forward about her family’s latest heartbreaking loss.

Cappelletti is grateful that as a resident of Pennsylvania, where abortion is accessible up to 24 weeks of gestation, she got the medical care she needed. But she knows that may not have been the case for women in 21 states with restrictive or total abortion bans in place.

“I don’t know that I fully processed my own grief, because that’s just where my mind went to right away,” Cappelletti said, in an emotional interview just a few days after her loss.

Maternal mortality has increased in states with more restrictive abortion laws in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to an abortion, though it will be years until the effect of the laws is clear.

An investigative series by ProPublica has tracked at least four women who have died “preventable” deaths — mostly due to needing abortion procedures as they were facing a miscarriage, but health-care providers could not act, without risking criminal charges, until there was no fetal heartbeat. One of these reports, published Nov. 1, documented the 20-hour wait and three emergency room visits one Texas teenager made before dying from an infection while having a miscarriage.

Cappelletti’s health was not immediately in danger. But if she waited for her body to reject the pregnancy on its own, she was at a greater risk of dangerous levels of bleeding or an infection, her doctor told her. And since Cappelletti’s fetus did not have a heartbeat, she may have been able to get the medical procedure, even in the states with the most restrictive abortion bans.

However, she said she worries that should former President Donald Trump be reelected, he would limit abortions nationally, as detailed by the conservative Project 2025. Trump has distanced himself from the 900-page policy agenda, despite it being authored by 140 former Trump administration officials.

“It wasn’t lost on me that the procedure I would be getting a week before Election Day might not be available to me the next time I might need it,” Cappelletti said.

The Trump campaign, in a statement, said Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris are “LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people” about Trump’s relationship with Project 2025 and he has “long been consistent in supporting the rights of the states to make decisions on abortion.” Karoline Leavitt, his national press secretary, also said Trump would not sign a federal abortion ban if back in the White House.

Cappelletti, who worked as the director of policy for Planned Parenthood before her election to the state Senate in 2020, said she and her husband were “very excited to welcome a second child.”

Cappelletti’s name will appear on Tuesday’s ballot, as she is up for reelection against Republican Greg Harris. She’ll continue to experience the symptoms of her loss through the next week, including cramping and bleeding. The emotional side, however, will likely be dealt with after the election, she said.

Her extraordinary public plea is not for her reelection, which she is expected to win. Or necessarily to “politicize my grief,” contending “reproductive rights was already politicized.”

Rather, her message is to undecided voters across Pennsylvania that they consider voting for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made abortion access a cornerstone of her presidential campaign.

“My plea is as a human being, and as a mother: I deserve dignity and respect that I’m going to make the decisions that are best for me and my community.”