When she tells the story of her ectopic pregnancy, she courageously gives it as an example of how abortion politics hurts women.
Florida pro-life House member Kat — Kathryn, spelled correctly 😊 — Cammack is getting lousy and really outright cruel treatment online. And, as best I can tell, it’s because she’s being an honest broker, trying to make an actual difference for people’s lives — including mothers and their children — in Washington, D.C.
God bless her for trying to restore some of the nobility of public service and to remind people that the people involved in such service are only human.
Earlier this week, an interview was posted to the Interwebs with Cammack by Tara Palmeri, a self-described “independent reporter,” according to her X page. The conversation was meant to be about men — and women — behaving badly on Capitol Hill. That was, I thought, a helpful conversation — honest about the all-too-often repulsive-to-decency environment on and around the Hill, while demonstrating a bipartisan will to do something about it.
I challenged pro-life Congresswoman Kat Cammack on whether misinformation alone was responsible for the delay in her emergency treatment, or whether Florida’s heartbeat abortion law played a role in delaying her emergency treatment. “We have to understand the danger of playing… pic.twitter.com/2MVrFojAMd
— Tara Palmeri (@tarapalmeri) June 23, 2026
Anyone who has ever worked in D.C. has stories. I confess some utter naïveté the first time I saw a sitting senator who was talking family values by day hitting on pretty interns at a think tank’s after-hours event.
As I saw more of life, of course, what outraged me was not so much sin — we all fall — but that there didn’t seem to be widespread concern to make public service more conducive to virtue. Life in Congress, in many cases, means taking a man (that was the majority when I was on the Hill) away from his wife and kids and having him go to events every night. And very possibly he’s sleeping in a basement apartment during the week or at his office.
No adult should be sleeping in his office.
No adult should be expected to be at receptions with alcohol every night.
The most healthy/civilized thing some of them do in their downtime during the week is to become addicted to the gym (yes, I did sometimes wonder about P90X, I confess — though at least, it has its upsides even if adhered to obsessively?).
One of my favorite D.C. stories is one a congressional wife tells. Her husband, a new congressman at the time, made a comment to her about how friendly the women on the Hill were. She smiled, suggesting he not wear his member pin the next day.
Sure enough.
He didn’t. The gals weren’t as friendly.
She knew they wouldn’t be.
I remember watching women throw themselves at one particularly powerful man in the White House at a White House correspondents’ dinner many moons ago. It was very early in the night — so being overserved was likely not the reason — and, well, let’s just say he was not about to make People’s Sexiest Man Alive cover.
Of course, he was legitimately powerful at the time.
I wrote this years ago for CNN with a friend who shared the concern. To the 112th Congress, we (my co-author was Seth Leibsohn) wrote:
We all know politics is considered a hardball sport, but how you comport yourself is as much a part of your life here as political victories and your voting record. “Decency” should be a new watchword in Washington, and it falls to you to make it so. If you don’t see it here, be it here.
And let’s not skirt that famous power-as-aphrodisiac line here. The men and women — and children — of America have enough trouble now. They don’t need leaders who further mock the institution of marriage and instruct for the worse with their behavior. As Professor Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia recently put it: “In the last three decades, nonmarital childbearing, divorce, low-quality marriages and family instability have all been on the rise in middle-American homes. . . . Why? Over this same period, the cultural, civic and economic foundations of marriage in middle America have been eroding.”
But, please, don’t just talk about decency — live it. There will be times where you’ll find yourself feeling lonely and misunderstood in this demanding job you campaigned for. There will be times you’ll find someone willing to make you feel otherwise. Caution.
Power doesn’t have to be corrupting. Your office is not an entitlement or free pass. Never cease earning the privilege you have been given. In this way, your campaign is every day — a campaign for a race much more significant and enduring than any political one you’ll ever run.
The Cammack interview is getting attention, however, not because of common ground on decency, but because of an experience she continues to share about one of her own pregnancies. (She most notably talked about it with the Wall Street Journal last year.) She had a dangerous, brutally painful in every way, ectopic pregnancy. When she talks about this, she has been known to get emotional. Because she is a mother talking about her baby.
The interview is making the rounds because the pro-abortion left seems to think they have got her good as a hypocrite of some sort.
She wound up in a hospital in Florida, after Dobbs. The hospital delayed, not sure about what to do — but not from a purely medical perspective. Kat Cammack, when she tells this story, courageously gives it as an example of how abortion politics hurts women, a position she held before this happened to her, and a position she is even more convicted on now.
Ever since Dobbs — even before — there has been a consistent campaign to scare people. I shouldn’t call it a campaign because while some of it is orchestrated, I think it is more of an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to make women fear any and all abortion regulations. Make them think that all such laws are potentially deadly to women. And let’s, of course, keep pretending that there is only one patient in a pregnancy, unless the “fetus” is wanted or politically convenient. Do not follow the science, in other words, is the message.
I don’t know all the details of this most recent interview — Palmeri says it was requested by Cammack’s office and that in the end it was also requested that it not be run. She also says that there were no ground rules about what could be used. Palmeri says she considered what she says she was asked to do but thought it too important not to run. (I’m guessing if she was asked not to use anything, it was the portion about the ectopic pregnancy.) As Cammack explains during the interview, the hyper-politics of abortion has become an ongoing safety concern. When she was later pregnant with a her now-ten-month-old daugther, violence was consistently threatened, including a promise by one who said: “I’m going to come cut out your unborn child, and roast it over a fire.”
Imagine abortion breeding such violence.
What are we doing to ourselves?
When we overlook the annihilation of the inconvenient, this should not be the first thing we should be shocked by.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched this interviewer before — I only know what Palmeri says in this interview and around it about herself. She seems like she’s being transparent about being somewhat surprised that Cammack cares about men behaving badly when Cammack has supported Trump — the congresswoman has one of those famous MAGA red hats visible in her office. Palmeri also seems flabbergasted that Cammack doesn’t walk away agreeing that Florida is a dangerous place to be pregnant with complications because of pro-life laws.
I, meanwhile, listen to the setup and the interview and feel for Cammack all over again and the ordeal she experienced, made worse by hospital confusion about the law.
The confusion comes not from law itself but from the commentary around the law. Which is Cammack’s point.
Palmeri quotes Cammack saying: “Politics has really, really endangered a lot of women’s lives.”
This evidently is supposed to make Cammack rethink her opposition to abortion. No, it should make us all appreciate that reckless, heated rhetoric around abortion is helping no one. Before we even talk about laws post-Dobbs, the very words we use and the tone we take can pour salt into open wounds.
I’ve been in situations since Dobbs when listeners to comments I make are shocked at the possibility that pro-lifers don’t want women with sepsis or cancer to go untreated if they are pregnant. I imagine some of them would be shocked that Cammack didn’t have an abortion because her baby was developing outside of her uterus, unable to survive. As Cammack relays, there was a real danger that she would have died of excessive bleeding — that neither the baby nor she would live.
Two patients. A doctor even wrote a book with that title.
Two patients. Both worthy of treatment.
That’s what pro-lifers have been saying all along, folks.
If the world is a more dangerous place for pregnant women since Dobbs, it’s not because of the end of Roe v. Wade or because of protections now put in place in states for the lives of the unborn. It’s because of reckless propaganda — which only continues in stereo as Cammack gives her honest testimony about the repercussions about these lies about pro-life laws that are impacting how doctors and hospital administrators are operating, advised by lawyers being influenced by ideology.