Republican U.S. Representative for Florida’s 3rd congressional district Kat Cammack is a vocal anti-abortion campaigner. She’s co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus and celebrated the overturning of Roe v Wade.
But, in a new interview with Tara Palmeri, Cammack revealed her political position on the uncompromising sanctity of life clashed with reality when a pregnancy complication put her body, her future, and her survival in jeopardy.
Cammack recounted the nightmare she experienced in 2024 shortly after Florida’s strict law took effect. At roughly five weeks pregnant, she began hemorrhaging, and doctors examined her. As Cammack explained:
“They kept doing the blood tests to try to figure out what was going on. And they finally with some ultrasounds were able to figure out that it was an ectopic pregnancy, a corneal, which is one of the rarest that you can have and one of the most dangerous.
Like I said, it was about 5 weeks along. They couldn’t detect a heartbeat. And they said that given where it was, because the hCG levels were continuing to rise, it would eventually rupture and it would cause internal bleeding and there was a very real risk of dying.”
She said the doctors told her she had to go to the ER immediately and “gave her two options”. The first was a surgery that meant she would “likely lose” her uterus. The second was a shot of cancer drug methotrexate. But, as she explained, the doctors paused and said, “Wait, we have questions.”
Methotrexate is the same medication used in abortions, and she says the nurses treating her explained:
“Well, um, according to the law, if we give you a shot of methotrexate, we are going to be held liable, and the doctor is very concerned.”
This is, of course, the very type of restrictive abortion law that Cammack has spent her political career campaigning for. Cammack argued back:
“I’m 5 weeks. The law says six, and I’m 5 weeks, there is no heartbeat, and this is very clearly a, you know, danger to the life of the mother situation.” And she said, “Oh, no, no, I know that.”
“How long does it take to die if you have internal bleeding?”
All the while, Cammack was still bleeding, saying that she asked her husband to “please Google how long does it take to die if you have internal bleeding”. Cammack then angrily pushes back on an allegation that she called the governor to force them to treat her. In fact, she called the governor’s office:
“It’s 11:30 at night. I called the governor’s office, not the governor, the governor’s office to try to get legal counsel from their office on the phone because there was no one else I could call to have them explain to the doctors, to the hospital administrators that the law in fact said one, life of the mother, rape, incest, and this was clearly life of the mother situation.”
Whether any other woman in Cammack’s situation would receive help by calling the governor’s office for legal advice in the middle of the night is unclear.
But Cammack doesn’t blame her anti-abortion colleagues for putting her in a life-threatening situation. She places blame on pro-choice activists, alleging that women’s health campaigners conducted a campaign to “scare doctors and nurses away from providing care for women in crisis.”
One final caveat is that after the interview, Cammack contacted Palmieri and told her not to publish it. Palmieri did anyway, arguing: “She’s a public official. The interview was on the record. And more importantly, I believed the conversation was in the public interest.”
Palmieri points out:
“If a member of Congress with access to doctors, lawyers, and political connections found herself in that situation, what happens to the woman who doesn’t? In the middle of the emergency, she called the Governor’s office to request a lawyer. But what happens to the woman who doesn’t know the law? What happens to the woman who doesn’t have the confidence to challenge the people treating her? What happens to the woman who simply assumes the people in charge know what they’re doing?”
Published: Jun 24, 2026 10:47 am