Volume 1 of “Living and Dying Under Dobbs” (no audio). Scroll down to read the stories .

Volume 1 of the ongoing textile book

Scroll down to read the stories.

The numeral 28. The 8 also appears to be an hourglass.

In July 2022, Amber Thurman took abortion medication. Five days later, she began to experience symptoms of infection, but because of Georgia’s abortion ban doctors delayed performing the D&C she needed. After 20 long hours while her condition worsened, doctors did abdominal surgery, including a hysterectomy, but Amber’s heart stopped. She died at the age of 28, leaving a 6-year-old son, Messiah. I was 28 when I had a D&C after a miscarriage. I lived and bore a son.

Three concentric blue circles on blue square

Deborah Dorbert learned that she was pregnant with a fetus who had Potter syndrome and would not survive long after birth. Because of Florida’s abortion ban, Deborah carried him to term. Upon delivery, he was handed to her, in her words, “blue and cold, gasping for air.” Deborah and her husband held their son and watched him suffocate for 94 minutes, as represented by the 94 stitches on this square, taken at one-minute intervals. Milo Evan Dorbert was born and died on March 3, 2023.

Outline of human head in grey fabric stitched with red thread onto striped black fabric with collaged newspaper border.

On March 20, 2025, after Selena Chandler-Scott, 24, experienced a miscarriage, she was found unconscious and bleeding outside her apartment complex. Because she disposed of the remains in the trash, she was arrested at the hospital and charged with “concealing a death” and “abandoning a dead body.” At least a million pregnancies in the U.S. every year end in miscarriage. There are not, yet, laws concerning how women must discard miscarriages. The charges against Selena were ultimately dropped, but not before The Georgia Gazette printed her mugshot.

Three pink balloons--large, medium, and small, strings tied with pink bow, stitched on pale green fabric with pink flowers, bordered in white fabric with lace trim.

Thrilled to be expecting a daughter, Texan Nevaeh Crain and her mother Candace planned a baby shower filled with pink balloons. At the shower, Nevaeh began to feel ill. Despite miscarriage symptoms of abdominal cramps and sepsis, she was sent home twice from the ER. After she returned a third time, doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm the lack of fetal heartbeat, but by then it was too late. Nevaeh, age 18, died on Oct. 29, 2023. “I know it sounds selfish,” said Candace, “and God knows I would rather have both of them, but if I had to choose, I would have chosen my daughter.”

Texas flag with four vertical chains over it, evoking prison bars.

Certified midwife Maria Margarita Rojas became the first healthcare provider to be jailed for allegedly violating a state abortion ban after being arrested at gunpoint and handcuffed on March 6, 2025. She spent 10 days in jail before a bail fund posted $1.4 million, and was released wearing a tracking device and without her medical license. Maria was charged with a second-degree felony and faces up to 20 years in prison. As of June, she had not been indicted, so Maria is in limbo, unable to mount a defense or to practice medicine. “If the state can do this shoddy investigation, get an arrest warrant and throw you in jail,” says her attorney, “just by saying the word ‘abortion,’ without even actually having the evidence to back it up — any health care provider is at risk in the state of Texas.”

Nigerian flag (two vertical green stripes separated by white stripe). Stitched on top, yellow and black print fabric in shape of circle with missing wedge and gold beads, meant to evoke African woman's head wrap.

After Porsha Ngumezi, age 35, miscarried at 11 weeks in Texas, she was “passing large clots the size of grapefruit” and needed two transfusions. Despite Porsha’s clotting disorder, the doctor who finally saw her told her husband Hope that “routine” treatment was the drug misoprostol, not a D&C. The woman that Hope called his queen died on June 11, 2023. Family members were bewildered, saying a D&C is “a simple procedure. We do this all the time in Nigeria.” For months after Porsha’s death, when the younger of her two sons saw a woman with long braids from afar, he ran after her, shouting, “That’s Mommy!”