This Congresswoman Is 8 Months Pregnant and Facing 17 Years in Prison

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On May 9, 2025, Congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey joined fellow members of Congress to visit Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Newark, to observe the conditions there. Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, arrived later, was asked to leave and arrested for trespassing (charges that were later dropped). McIver and the other lawmakers were caught in the scrum with ICE agents, but only she was charged with a crime : assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement, charges that carry a maximum prison sentence of 17 years. The congresswoman turned down a plea deal, pleaded not guilty, and maintains her innocence. Since her initial visit, there have been continued reports of poor conditions at Delaney Hall, including the deaths of three people detained there.

In the meantime, this May, she shared that after struggling with secondary infertility for nearly a decade, she was pregnant with her second child. Here, in her own words, Representative McIver shares her decision to go through IVF while facing a prison sentence.

I have a beautiful 10-year-old daughter. It feels like she's 10 going on50, and I can't believe it's been 10 years since I gave birth to this beautiful soul of mine. I was 30 years old at the time and had a great job as a school administrator for Willingboro Public Schools in New Jersey. So when I got pregnant, I decided I was going to buy a home and do all of the things needed to prepare for this new human. But the truth is nothing prepares you perfectly for being a mom under the most normal circumstances—and nothing could have prepared me for everything that came next.

My daughter was a joyful handful from the minute she was born. Shortly
after I had her, I definitely knew I wanted to have another baby. I just didn'tknow if it was going to be possible. For a long time, I have battled with
fibroids since before having my first kid. I was 20-something when I first found out that I had fibroids; my OB/GYN at the time was like, "Oh, they're minor, they're small, you should get them taken care of," but it was not an urgent thing. Then, the next year, she told me they had grown and now I had to get them taken care of. I did what she told me—at the time, I was very uneducated about fibroids and about how many women, especially women of color, suffer from them. Thankfully, I had a good-paying job that offered health insurance, so I was able to go to a specialist and get them removed.

I thought that would be the end, but it didn't stop there. I was in pain and bled excessively—honestly, no woman should have to go through this. My health was already suffering and it seemed like what I wanted—another baby—might be slipping away too.

I had to have another surgery to get more fibroids removed. My OB/GYN was saying, "Look, you've got to decide if you're going to have a kid or not." I'm like, "Well, hey, look, I'm on the council. I'm in public service. I don't really have the ability to just drop everything I'm doing and go have a child. It doesn't work like that."

But I spoke to my boyfriend (now my husband) and he's like, "Well, let's
try." So we did. We're trying, and trying, and trying, and it's not happening.I go back to the OB/GYN. She sends me for some additional tests to see if my
last surgery had caused permanent damage or scar tissue. When they took a look, they learned my fallopian tubes had indeed been damaged. So now, in order for me to conceive, the only option would be IVF. It was a new thing for me, a whole process that you have to learn about, and God forbid your insurance doesn't cover the cost (because it's so expensive, many women don't have the option to even consider IVF). My insurance at the time covered part of my treatment and made it possible for me.

I did my research and learned everything I could, and then the journey
began. It was very, very difficult, time-consuming, and stressful. It's a lotto put your body through. And, still, we were the lucky ones. We ended up
getting through it with less pain than many women and couples experience. I know some people who are on their 10th try, after thousands and thousands of dollars, so much heartbreak, and many miscarriages and failed attempts later, and it's just so sad to hear from so many women who've battled that and are still battling today.

In 2022, after successfully getting two embryos, we decided that we would
transfer one. Once again, it wasn't the perfect time—and I was in the middle of reelection to my council seat—but my biological clock was ticking, and lifemust go on even in an election year. We decided to do the transfer. I hustled
myself over to a ribbon cutting. Life, I told myself—like so many women do—had to go on. It was a crazy day. There wasn't much time to rest in the way I might have wanted. A few days later I found out the attempt failed. I was sad—and more than sad, I was disappointed, a little bit in myself. You feel defeated after. You're like, maybe I did something wrong, maybe it wasn't the right timing. We decided to wait a while before trying again.

While we were waiting, figuring it out, I had to have another surgery because the fibroids grew back again. And in the midst of all that, I got elected to Congress. I was sworn in in 2024 after winning a fast special election campaign, and I found myself looking at a whole different world to navigate. And then, this year, age 40 was like, "Hello!" And my doctor's asking me again, "Are you having another child?" The subtext being: "LaMonica, you need to really figure it out."

The thing that couldn't stop my biological clock, the thing that turning 40 didn't care about, was this: Now I was facing 17 years in federal prison for daring to do my job and holding the Trump administration accountable. At 38, six months into my time in Congress, I had gone to inspect an ICE detention center that had just come online in my district. We were hearing that people were being abused and, across my district—where about 30 percent of people were born outside of this country—ICE was grabbing parents off the street, kids were missing from school, the community I grew up in was afraid. I had to do what I could to protect them. ICE and the Trump administration, less than thrilled about the idea of accountability, turned a standard and legally protected oversight visit to this detention center into chaos. Then they charged and indicted me for federal crimes.

Now, instead of just running for reelection—which, to be fair, I am also doing—I spend my days writing bills about bringing down energy costs and protecting food stamps, and my nights talking to lawyers about how to keep standing up to ICE without being sent to prison.

Under the best circumstances, Congress was not built to make it easy to have a baby—that's part of why I'll be only the 16th woman to give birth while serving here—and these were not the best circumstances. I am the only member of Congress facing criminal charges for standing up to this president. I will owe my lawyers—who I'm working with tirelessly to build a defense that can stand up to the unlimited resources and vindictiveness of the Justice Department—$1 million for defending me (members of Congress can't take any free legal help). Nobody is getting enough sleep in my family.

But I also knew I couldn't put the world on pause. The big legal questions about our democracy, justice, and the battle I was in ran into the realities of what I wanted for my family. My husband and I had to think about what happens in our future. And what would happen to our dream of a big family, a younger sibling for our daughter. We all have to do that, because we are all not just one thing that happens to us—one job, one circumstance, or one unfair thing. So, my husband and I talked about it and I was like, "Okay, we'll do this. This is the only time to do it."

Before I could start IVF again, I had to go through yet another surgery—my fourth at this point—to have more fibroids removed. Timing, never really my friend, put my procedure on the same day as a critical health care vote for the extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits. So, after being put under and having surgery in the morning, I spent the afternoon bandaging myself together, resting for a couple of hours, and finding my way to Washington, D.C., to vote that night. (To be clear, the surgery was a long-planned and prepped-for thing, meant to take place during a break, but Speaker of the House Mike Johnson changed the schedule and called the vote unexpectedly.) Obviously, the doctor did not advise me to go travel to D.C. to vote, but it was a very important vote—health care matters for people in my district and for the people of this country. I mean, just being in my situation with the health complications I was facing, I could not imagine people who have to go through life not having affordable health care. I knew I would not sleep at night if I missed that vote.

After I recovered, we started IVF again. I was crossing my fingers because it was the last embryo. And it worked. Now I am 33 weeks pregnant, hauling a pregnant belly to court, town halls, votes, and more. Every day I'm just really praying for a healthy baby in October. I know every expectant parent feels the same.

We just want what's best for our babies—all of our babies. We want them to be safe, cared for, protected. And that's the feeling I've always brought to my work and to my life. As the oldest daughter who helped raise her siblings since she was young, whose mom was doing the best she could and whose family got by with help from the government. As the city council president who fought to get all the lead pipes in my city replaced so families could be healthier. As a member of Congress who is bringing a fight to halls where our voices have rarely been heard at all, let alone enough. Who is making sure Black moms have a voice in Congress? Who is fighting back to make sure you don't get kicked off your SNAP benefits or out of your apartment? Who is standing up for kids whose parents are getting deported, for the women who ICE is detaining while they are pregnant, for the people who are dying in ICE custody at Delaney and all across the country—they are someone's baby, too. I'll do it. I have to.

People might find it crazy that even though I'm facing 17 years in prison, I made the decision to try IVF one more time and get pregnant. But, at the end of the day, this is one thing I didn't want to have consumed by my career or this administration. I thought about what I would say 25 years from now: If I did not do all of the things that I wanted to do because I was afraid, would I be okay with that? Would I be able to live with that? I couldn't.

Every part of this is worth talking about, because too often women are told not to share. I continue to talk about my experience with fibroids, with infertility, and around IVF because there's just not enough conversation around what it's like. I want other women to feel more comfortable bringing this conversation up at the girls' martini night. Some women see you and think you have it all together because you've reached a certain milestone or have a particular job, but the reality is different. We're all battling things in our personal lives, and I hope by telling these stories and sharing this, I can help someone else through whatever they're battling.

I want to be able to look back at my two beautiful children, God willing, and see how their lives transpire. I couldn't let them take that from me. Even with everything that is happening with this president and the administration, people say to me, "Oh you seem unbothered and you're joyful, you're smiling." And as much as I am outraged, activated, and sometimes terrified, I'm like, "Yes, I'm still me." In some ways, deciding to not let them steal who I am is all I have to get through this. I refuse to let them take my joy or my future. They want to see you broken into pieces. I refuse to let them do that to me.

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