If only I thought about that before I voted!

A South Carolina lawmaker on Tuesday had to fight back tears as he explained that an anti-abortion law he’d voted for led to a young woman nearly losing her uterus, and even put her life at risk. Republican State Rep. Neal Collins told the state’s House Judiciary Committee that he’d lost sleep after learning about the case of a 19-year-old woman whose water broke after just 15 weeks of pregnancy.

He said that because the fetus had a heartbeat, lawyers advised doctors that they could not remove the fetus, despite that being the recommended medical course of action. The young woman was discharged from hospital.

“First, she’s going to pass this fetus in the toilet,” Collins said. “She’s going to have to deal with that on her own.” He added that a doctor told him that there was a “greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus” and “there’s a 10 percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself die.”

“That weighs on me,” Collins added. “I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.”