First, the loss of a baby, then the loss of legal rights

The pain surged throughout her lower body. Navy chaplain Mercedes Petitfrere, 20 weeks pregnant with her first child, rushed to the emergency room at her military hospital in Jacksonville, N.C. Her abdomen throbbed. She could hardly walk. It hurt to pee. A midwife at Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune attributed her pain to fibroids. But Petitfrere - a 35-year-old Black lieutenant whose pregnancy was considered high-risk because of her age - explained that she'd had the benign growths in her uter

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