BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — On June 24, 2022, Louisiana’s strict abortion ban became the law of the land. Around that same time, Kaitlyn Joshua was preparing to be a mother again.

“My daughter is now five but at the time she was three, almost four,” Joshua explained. “And we were just kinda thinking it would be a perfect time to add a baby and we were really excited to do that.”

But all that excitement turned into endless doctor visits, confusion and pain.

“My provider’s office stated that they wouldn’t be able to see me, until the 12-week mark,” Joshua said. “The pain that I was experiencing was worse than what I had experienced delivering my daughter.”

Joshua thought she was having a miscarriage, but medical providers and doctors were too afraid to diagnose or treat her.

“I asked her, so is this for sure a miscarriage, like am I not going to be able to continue this pregnancy. She said I’m not sure and I can’t really tell you that in this moment, but I am sending you home with prayers,” said Joshua.

Joshua had no choice but to wait until the miscarriage passed. She says if the law had been different, she would have had access to an abortion. The same procedure often used during miscarriages.

Latoya Harris says she looks at maternal health differently as a Black woman. She says she almost didn’t make it out of the delivery room alive. According to Harris, she said she was given an epidural that didn’t work. She kept telling doctors that something wasn’t right.

“After losing so much blood, I passed out and I woke up to just wondering did I code or did I have to be revived,” Harris asked.

But she pulled through and so did her baby girl. Harris and Joshua are not only mothers with survival stories, but they also represent a statistic. According to the CDC, Black women have the highest rates of pregnancy complications in the U.S.

These women are thankful to be alive, knowing they could have been among the thousands of Black women who die during childbirth.

“They are often times living on lower incomes than their white counterparts and they are also facing implicit or even sometimes explicit racial bias within the health care system,” said Michelle Erenberg, executive director of Lift Louisiana.

“There just needs to be more health care during the pregnancy that’s provided to them,” said Sarah Zagorski from Pro Life Louisiana. “As well as support with more information about the risks that could be involved and those sorts of things, that can help them have a safe birth.”

The CDC says Black women have the highest maternal death rate in the country and in Louisiana.

“There’s a lot of existing health disparities that exist already along racial lines in the state of Louisiana. Black women are less likely to be insured,” Erenberg explained.

“We know that there are women who become pregnant where they don’t have doctor visits and they don’t have access to those things,” said Zagorski.

Now that abortion access is prohibited in the state, pro-choice advocates believe the number of Black women who die during pregnancy will go up, because they will be forced to carry pregnancies to term.

As of 2019, a CDC report found about 40% of women who receive abortions are Black. That report cites Black women are more likely to live in poverty. The National Institute of Health says Black women are more likely to live in contraceptive deserts.

According to the following non-profits, including Advocates for Youth, Black Girls Equity Alliance and Giving Compass, Black women often face barriers in accessing proper sex education.

A study done by the National Black Women’s Justice Institute found that Black women experience high rates of sexual violence. Black women also have the highest rate of unwanted pregnancies.

“We have lawmakers, not doctors that are making these policy decisions, it’s actually adding to those structures of disparity,” Erenberg explained. “The problem is not going to get any better, it’s only going to make the problem worse”

“There’s more that can be done to improve maternal health outcomes,” Zagorski said. “That’s something we are working to do by providing funding to abortion alternatives in the legislature.”

But many, like Joshua, doesn’t think lawmakers want to fix the disparity.

“It doesn’t fit the narrative of the pro-life movement to address the health care disparities,” Joshua said. “It’s so much cuter to create a study than it is to actually throw dollars at an entire community addressing a maternity care desert or sex education in schools.”

“Educating youth, providing support to pregnancy care centers and helping with funding for those resources, that’s our whole mission,” Zagorski explained. “It’s not only about the unborn child, it’s about caring for the mother as well. We want to help them both.”

Until lawmakers do something about it, Joshua believes there will be more stories like hers and Harris’.

“It’s all about control. It’s all about making sure that women understand our place,” Joshua said.

“By God’s grace, he protected me,” Harris said. “Our lives definitely matter.”

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CONCORDIA PARISH, La. (KNOE) – The Louisiana State Fire Marshal has urged the importance of using smoke alarms in homes following a recent Concordia PArish house fire that resulted in one death.

RELATED CONTENT: Deadly Ferriday house fire under investigation

State Fire Marshal Chief Bryan J. Adams is reminding Louisiana residents of the life-saving capabilities of smoke alarms in homes. Adams says deputies were unable to confirm the presence of working smoke alarms in the Concordia Parish home.

“So many fire emergency outcomes have the potential to be very different if smoke alarms were present and working,” said Adams, “They give families critical extra seconds to react, gather together safely, and escape.”

The Operation Save-A-Life program helps families access working smoke alarms for free and get help installing them. To learn more about Operation Save-A-Life, visit their website. To register for a free smoke alarm installation, click here or contact your local fire department.

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NEW ORLEANS — What would be the nation’s largest export terminal for liquefied natural gas won approval from a federal commission Thursday, although when the Louisiana project will be completed remains unclear in light of a Biden administration delay announced this year on such projects.

Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass 2 southwestern Louisiana project, often referred to as CP2, was approved with little discussion by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during a livestreamed meeting. However, the project, which would be Venture Global’s second such facility in the area, still needs Department of Energy approval, and its immediate prospects are uncertain, given the administration’s January pause.

That pause aligned President Joe Biden with environmentalists who fear the huge increase in exports, in the form of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions.

Louisiana’s two Republican U.S. senators, officials from other energy producing states and industry officials have derided the pause as shortsighted and a boon to U.S. adversaries that produce energy, including Iran and Russia. But, some residents and environmentalists in the state — dependent on oil and gas dollars but also vulnerable to the effects of climate change — are wary of more LNG development.

Venture Global issued a statement praising the regulatory commission’s approval. “This project will be critical to global energy security and supporting the energy transition, as well as provide jobs and economic growth across Louisiana and the United States,” said Mike Sabel, CEO of Venture Global LNG.

The commission’s approval brings new pressure on Biden from environmentalists.

“The temporary pause on LNG export permitting was a good first step; now President Biden must make the pause permanent and do whatever is necessary to clamp down on fossil fuels throughout the country,” the group Food & Water Watch said in an emailed statement critical of the regulatory commission’s decision.

“New LNG export terminals are simply not compatible with a healthy, livable future,” said a statement from the environmental group Evergreen Action.

Outgoing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Allison Clements spoke against the projects Thursday morning. “These projects will have enormous emissions of greenhouse gases, equivalent to putting more than 1.8 million new gas-fueled cars on the road each year. The order does not meaningfully assess those emissions,” Clements said.

Commission Chair Willie Phillips said after the meeting that the commission had to maintain “a delicate balance” between the environmental concerns of communities and following the law governing project approval.

“When matters are complete, when our review is final, we give those matters a vote. And this matter is consistent with the standard that we’ve set for every other project,” Phillips said when asked about critics’ claims that the commission gave “rubber stamp” approval to the project.

He said the commission’s actions, in requiring about 130 conditions on the CP2 project, go “above and beyond” what the panel is required to do under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law that requires extensive study and public input before major environmental projects can be approved.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly of The Associated Press.