Elisabeth Weber, a 31-year-old mother from Greenville, South Carolina, was denied immediate medical care due to strict abortion laws in her state that the fetus no longer had a heartbeat.
For weeks she was forced into an infeasible pregnancy, describing emotional trauma as feeling like her “womb becomes a grave.”
Weber already has three daughters – Neveah, 8; Story, 5; 18-month-old Finley lost a son in 2018, nameing her and her husband, Thomas, Lorenzo Thomas Weber or “Enzo” to prepare for the arrival of her next child.
However, on March 27, 2025, during a routine test at 9 weeks of pregnancy, she was told that the fetus had stopped growing three weeks ago and could not detect any heartbeat. Despite this, she was instructed to go home and wait for her own physical miscarriage.
“I was still completely bedridden by nausea and kept throwing it away. “My body didn’t realize I was no longer pregnant. ”
A few days later, when she returned to the emergency room, there was a desperate need to undergo dilation and coagulation (D&C) (D&C) (a common procedure for removing tissue from the uterus – she was told that due to South Carolina’s abortion ban, commonly known as the Heartbeat Act, she had to wait. Once a fetal heartbeat could usually be detected, the law prohibits miscarriage after six weeks of pregnancy.
“My baby has no heartbeat, which still makes me unable to take care of,” she said. “I was told, ‘We have to wait legally because of the law.'” Even if her pregnancy is not feasible, she can do nothing unless she starts bleeding or becomes sluggish.
During this traumatic wait, Webber posted a video to Tiktok from her car and it spread quickly. “My child is dead. No heartbeat. Now I have to wait another week to know my child is dead and can do anything,” she burst into tears in the video.
Eventually, the patient’s advocate helped her find another hospital. Tests show she has developed an infection, but she is still deprived of D&C because she does not meet legal standards. Instead, she was sent to painkillers.
“I don’t think I can even be sad,” she told people. “That loss has brought everything from the time I lost my son to the small island developing States. Most importantly, the financial burden is oppressed – none of us can work, and my husband’s Crohn’s outbreak of the cause of stress.”
The term “abortion” appears in her paperwork when she is finally allowed to undergo the procedure. “This breaks me,” she said.
Now Weber shouts out loud, hoping to trigger change. “I hope this very terrible situation is a little good. It’s dangerous for women. It hurts women.”
In the program behind it, she said she “finally was able to start grieving” her son’s loss. “My little Enzo.”
