Catherine LeComte

Catherine LeComte

Catherine LeComte

Burlington

Massachussetts

USA

Collateral Damage explores an overlooked aspect of the fallout of the Dobbs decision: diminishing access to medical care for women who spontaneously miscarry. One in four pregnancies (or approximately 1 million a year in the U.S.) end in a miscarriage. Complications require the same medical interventions as abortions. Women have entered a new landscape of risk as doctors and pharmacists increasingly delay or deny miscarriage care for fear of running afoul of abortion bans.

Through the use of lens based and mixed media, I make work exploring my own personal experience of miscarriage and that of women I discover through research who are currently being denied care. A woman in Texas endured days of excruciating pain in a bathtub full of blood after being refused care at a hospital. A Missouri woman was refused the medication (misoprostol) she needed to safely pass her miscarriage by a pharmacist. Medical students in restrictive states may learn to perform surgical removal procedures on papayas because they are denied access to live patients. This body of work sheds light on the conflation of miscarriage and abortion and draws attention to the lack of an ethical approach to medical care for women.