Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) revealed details about an abortion she had as a teen.
Bush said that just as the surgical abortion was about to begin, she told the abortionist that she was not ready, but the doctor and clinic staff ignored her and shut her objections down.
The Democratic congresswoman related the story during an interview on PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.” Hoover noted the incident was included in Bush’s new political memoir “The Forerunner,” which went on sale this week.
The incident occurred during Bush’s second abortion.
“I said, no, you know what, I’m not ready. And the nurse just wouldn’t listen to me.”@RepCori tells the “complicated” story of her second abortion, when her pleas to halt the procedure were ignored.
“I felt like it was, ‘Oh well, we know better. You don’t know what you need.'” pic.twitter.com/sdJaQRxVWb
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) October 7, 2022
“You became pregnant two years later when you were 19, and you chose to have an abortion. You went to an abortion clinic, at this time you were enrolled in university,” Hoover said. “You got to the clinic and had second thoughts.”
“I was thinking back to the first abortion,” Bush said. “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 even experience even some harm or some racism in this space. I thought I was ready.”
Bush said she went from room to room going through all the preliminary steps, which was like an “assembly line,” but after she was helped up onto the operating table she started having second thoughts.
One thing she thought about was that she hadn’t told the father of her child about the abortion.
“I just felt like I needed more time,” Bush said. “So I said ‘no, you know what, I’m not ready.’”
“And the nurse just wouldn’t listen to me. And I said, ‘no, I’m not ready,’” she said.
As Bush repeatedly told the clinic staff she was not ready, they continued to prepare instruments for the abortion, she said.
“They absolutely ignored me even to the point of ‘calm down,’ as if I was the problem,” Bush said.
Bush said that as she lay on the table, she looked around for someone else in the room who would listen to her, but she found no one.
“During this time, they put the instrument inside me and started the instrument, and I’m saying ‘no,’ but it was too late, because you couldn’t stop once it started,” she said.
Besides representing Missouri in the House, Bush is a registered nurse, pastor, and Black Lives Matter activist.
