In 2022, Amanda Zurawski became a national figure after she nearly died from pregnancy complications in Texas. Since then, she’s fought for women’s right to reproductive healthcare in Texas and across the country. Here, in her words, Amanda shares recent news about her growing family with Courier Texas special correspondent Bonnie Fuller.
I was out for a run in my Austin, Texas, neighborhood, trying to keep myself busy and distracted as I and my husband Josh waited to find out whether the two embryos that we had produced through IVF were genetically normal.
We had already endured an anxious week when our fertility clinic doctor called to say that there had been a problem with the testing. The lab didn’t get enough genetic material to know whether or not our two embryos were normal and healthy.
That meant it would be another long week before we would finally learn whether our two embryos could be used to help us—at last—start our much longed-for family.
So when I finally got the phone call from our fertility clinic sharing the news that both our embryos were perfect, I just collapsed on a neighbor’s front yard and started crying.
I was so happy, but I could not believe it. In our years-long quest to begin a family, Josh and I had gotten so much bad news over and over again that I just couldn’t believe we finally had some good news.
Our journey started when I was 33 and Josh and I had been married for about a year and a half. We had both grown up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and had known each other since preschool. We’d lost touch during college and reconnected when I left my teaching job in Fort Wayne to move to Austin for a new position. Josh had already moved there and he texted me. We hung out and then never stopped.
We started trying to have a child, but it became clear pretty quickly that we were going to need help from a fertility specialist, after my OB-GYN identified some issues.
I did get pregnant after an IUI (intrauterine insemination) procedure, and we were very excited to be expecting a girl, who Josh and I named Willow.
It was devastating when my water broke at 18 weeks—far too early for Willow to be viable. My condition was called PPROM.
It was heartbreaking, but because my 18-week-old baby still had a heartbeat, Josh and I were turned away from the hospital emergency room because of Texas’s law which banned abortion from conception.
Editor’s note: Preterm premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM, is when the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus breaks early. Once the amniotic sac breaks, dangerous bacteria can enter a woman’s uterus. Standard treatment for PPROM before abortion bans were enacted had been to empty the uterus of the fetus and all other pregnancy material using a dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure to prevent a dangerous infection that could damage a woman’s vital organs and lead to death. The D&E procedure is the same procedure used in some abortions.
‘Josh noticed I had become incoherent’
Doctors were not allowed to legally do a D&E to end my pregnancy (since it was considered equivalent to an abortion), even though my baby wasn’t viable. According to Texas’s abortion ban, I wasn’t eligible for the procedure because I wasn’t yet facing a “life-threatening physical condition caused by or arising from” my pregnancy.
Editor’s note: Doctors in Texas face prison sentences of 99 years, a loss of their medical license, and a $100,000 fine for performing abortions when a pregnant woman’s condition is not immediately life-threatening. Texas law now includes an exception to the ban allowing doctors to legally defend themselves for providing D&Es to women suffering from PPROM, provided documentation exists of a medical emergency or serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function and specifically recognizable previable premature rupture of the membranes.
I was sent away and told that I had to watch for signs that a serious infection had developed. I waited nervously at home for three days, and then Josh noticed that I had suddenly become incoherent.
He raced me to the hospital, but I was already in septic shock and doctors had to battle for three days to save my life. I was lucky to survive after an abortion (D&E), a blood transfusion, and massive doses of antibiotics.
My fallopian tubes were left so scarred by the infection and sepsis that they were blocked, and my uterus collapsed.
READ MORE: Texas’ abortion ban nearly killed her and left her unable to carry children
Once I recovered, I realized that the only option for Josh and I to have a child was for me to undergo IVF in order to produce embryos, and to find a surrogate to carry the pregnancy.
It was daunting.
Doing IVF and enlisting a surrogate is an enormous undertaking financially, emotionally, and physically. I underwent three rounds of IVF in Texas in 2023. It wasn’t until the third round that we had two healthy embryos. Meanwhile, we found our first surrogate through specialized Facebook groups and Reddit communities.
Unfortunately, our surrogate did not get pregnant after the first of our embryos was transferred into her uterus. It was a gut punch.
When we got the call with that news, it was crushing disappointment. Josh held me while I sobbed, “We are never going to have a baby.”
I didn’t handle the disappointment very healthfully. My coping mechanism is physical exercise. I really went overboard with running. Plus, I wasn’t eating enough. It took a very strong negative physical toll on my body.
My family was very concerned and urged me to do something about it. I started seeing a nutritionist and putting in the work to get better.
I made a lot of progress with my mental and physical health. I leaned on Josh and leaned on my family and I realized that I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on our journey to have a family. I decided that we had to make a new plan.
Meanwhile, I advocated for reproductive rights at events for the Biden and the Harris campaigns for president in 2024. Doing that work helped me cope.
Being part of the disappointment and then hope in the 2024 election cycle gave me hope in my personal life. It helped me to see that even when it feels really, really dark out there, when you look really hard, you could still find the light.
I had a lot of faith in my family and in Josh and our marriage. And then in 2025, the climate in our country was so awful—and it continues to be—but I see people fighting and having hope.
If other people were still fighting, then I could keep fighting to have a baby.
‘If other people were still fighting, then I could keep fighting to have a baby’
Josh and I decided to work with an agency specializing in matching would-be parents with surrogates for our second try.
Connecting with a surrogate is really weird. It feels like a combination of interviewing someone for a job and also dating. Some people want a very transactional, professional relationship with their surrogate. Others want a more connected, emotional relationship. With our two surrogates we thought it would be great if we ended up being close, but we didn’t want to force it.
Through the surrogacy agency you get profiles of potential surrogates, and it’s like you are reviewing someone’s online dating profile. You find out about their marital status, their job, how many children they have, how their children were birthed, and what their babies weighed at birth. You get photos.
We wanted to work with someone in a “Blue” state where abortion was legal, and we wanted a surrogate who was willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
After what happened in Alabama (in February 2024, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were considered unborn children, and IVF was halted for weeks), we didn’t want to have a surrogate or for me to do another round of IVF in a state that we felt was at risk of falling under the same fate.
We knew really quickly that we wanted to work with our surrogate. I can’t say enough good things about her. She is the nicest, kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met.
Her husband was on the call too, and we felt the same way about him. She had already given birth to three children and her family was on board.
She was really hoping to work with parents who couldn’t have kids of their own, who medically needed her help. And when she read our story and learned about Willow, she said her heart broke for us and she wanted to help us create our family.
‘I’m grateful that IVF exists, but it’s hard on your body’
I decided that I would do a second round of IVF, but because of what had happened in Alabama I intentionally chose not to do it in Texas or in any other state where I felt that IVF might be at risk.
We decided to work with a fertility clinic in New York City, CCRM Fertility, that has outstanding providers and that has clinics all over the country.
I’m so grateful that IVF exists, but it’s hard on your body. It’s hard emotionally, with cycles of high highs when you produce eggs and embryos, and low lows when a pregnancy doesn’t happen.
Once Josh and I finally got that new glimmer of hope with two healthy embryos, they were frozen and we had to have them transported to our surrogate to be transferred into her uterus.
That’s another fragile process. It’s a nerve-wracking day. Fortunately, the person who transported ours has been doing this for decades and he called me with updates during every step of his trip from picking up our embryos in NYC until he had delivered them to our surrogate’s clinic.
Once again, we had to wait for 14 agonizing days after the transfer of our first embryo. I remember I got the call while I was driving, delivering the news that our surrogate didn’t have a positive pregnancy test after that first embryo transfer.
I made it home, but as soon as I got there and saw Josh, I started sobbing.
I tried to hold onto hope knowing that we had one embryo left and our surrogate was willing to try again, but I was getting beaten down.
Two months later, the second transfer happened and after 14 days we were waiting and waiting for the call from our clinic. It was getting late in the day, so I called and emailed our nurse.
She said, “I’m sorry, but we only have partial test results.” But she emailed those to me.
They meant nothing to me, but I googled and I was like, wait a second—is that the pregnancy hormone? Does that mean it worked? I sent the results and info to Josh and he agreed that it seemed like that’s what it meant, but we couldn’t even say it out loud.
Then the nurse called again and told me that, yes, the pregnancy was confirmed. And our surrogate called and we were all screaming and crying with excitement.
Once our surrogate was pregnant, it was like early dating again. We didn’t want to step on each other’s toes. Our surrogate would call me after every appointment with her OB-GYN, and if there was an ultrasound, she would FaceTime Josh and me.
We learned that we were expecting a boy, and we got his due date.
‘You can understand why I was nervous about my baby’
In my current work advocating for the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare, I know so many women who have had pregnancy complications, and have had to flee from Texas to get abortions or were forced to carry babies in Texas that would die after birth.
In fact, I and a number of those women sued the state of Texas to try to get the state Supreme Court to provide doctors with more clarity about when they could provide medically necessary abortions. Sadly, the Texas Supreme Court refused to do that.
So you can understand why I was nervous about my baby. It was only once our surrogate had the baby’s 23-week anatomy scan confirming that he was healthy that I finally started to feel better.
Josh and I were on FaceTime together for the anatomy scan as the technician checked all our baby’s organs, and afterwards he said, “You almost broke my hand, you were squeezing it so hard.”
‘I had the baby’s bag packed’
The plan was for us to travel to be with our surrogate in the room for her labor and delivery. We were going to get there several days early, just in case. I had the baby’s bag packed and mine all ready.
That was really fortunate, because our surrogate went into labor over a week and a half early. We had to scramble, but we made it there in time for the delivery.
August Mikel James Zurawski was born on Sept. 13, and he is happy and healthy. We are the happiest.
It has been a long, grueling journey to become parents. We haven’t decided if we will try again, but we do have one frozen embryo left.
I used to be a teacher, and now as a parent I’m really concerned about the future of public education in Texas—with the voucher program taking money away from public schools and with some school boards injecting religion into the curriculum and whitewashing history.
For the present, we hope to stay in Texas and fight. But now we have someone else to think about.
