A Project 2025 adviser mockingly asked someone to ‘track down’ victims of abortion bans — 17,000 women responded
Derisive TikTok post received viral response from women who have suffered since end of Roe v Wade
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.A former Trump administration staffer, now a senior adviser in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, accidentally made a case for abortion rights in a failed attempt to undermine an answer by Kamala Harris during Tuesday’s presidential debate.
John McEntee, who served as Donald Trump’s director of White House personnel, is one of the founders of The Right Stuff, a right-wing dating site, and has a large following on TikTok.
His posts feature him sitting at a table, eating, across from the camera, presumably to mimic a date-like setting, while he makes a glib and offensive right-wing talking point, often misogynistic or racist.
In a post this week, which has 1.8 million views on TikTok, he says: “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v Wade was overturned?”
“Don’t hold your breath,” he adds, flippantly.
Well, he could have held his breath because the replies came in thick and fast.
The post now has more than 17,000 comments and they are almost all women sharing their stories of being turned away from emergency rooms in agony, bleeding out in parking lots, at home, in public bathrooms, and sometimes for months afterward.
Others talk about miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, losing their ability to have children, and driving across multiple states to get treatment where it was still legal — often while hemorrhaging. Most of the stories appear to involve wanted or planned pregnancies.
One of the most widely circulating responses to the clip is a video from a woman called Carmen Broesder that was shared on Instagram by the accounts “wordclown” and “agirlhasnopresident”.
Broesder’s ordeal is hard to hear but reflects the experience of many others. During her 19-day miscarriage in Idaho she was given just one dose of pain medicine, turned away from three emergency rooms, blacked out due to blood loss, could not eat because of her pain, and even developed AFib, a heart condition.
”I stopped eating so my daughter stopped eating. So I had to eat with tears running down my face cause it was actually painful to eat ‘cause I was in so much pain, everything hurt,” she recalls. “But my daughter needed to eat.”
Broesder adds: “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws.”
“But yeah, women are bleeding out in parking lots,” she says. “We exist.”
During Tuesday’s debate against Trump, Harris responded to a question on abortion: “Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v Wade. And they did exactly as they intended, and now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans.”
Harris added: “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage are being denied care in an emergency room because their health care providers are afraid, they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments