She sued after her abortion was denied, Now she's running for office.

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By Philip Elliott Washington Correspondent, TIME A Post-Dobbs World Changes The Ballot In Unexpected Ways The D.C. Brief will be back next week. In the meantime, here's a look at some of the latest reporting from TIME's Washington Bureau, including this exclusive profile from Charlotte Alter. Allie Phillips never wanted to be a politician, but she had always wanted to be a mom of two. Whenever Phillips asked her 5-year-old daughter, Adalie, what she wanted to be when she grew up, Adalie would say, "A big sister." So when Phillips found out she was pregnant again in Nov. 2022, Adalie was thrilled. "Her eyes got big and her jaw just dropped open," Phillips recalled. "Every night after that, she sang Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star to my belly. She’d kiss my belly every night before bed." Phillips and her husband planned to name the new baby Miley Rose. But at a routine anatomy scan when she was around 19 weeks pregnant, doctors told Phillips that the fetus had significant problems with its kidney, stomach, bladder, heart, lungs, and brain. These conditions were "not compatible with life outside the womb," a doctor told Phillips. Miley Rose would likely die before birth, and the longer Phillips stayed pregnant, the worse her own health could become. But Phillips, who lives in north Tennessee, could not get an abortion in her home state. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Tennessee enacted one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, leaving only the most narrow exception for emergency medical situations. In February, Phillips and her husband had to travel almost 1,000 miles to get an abortion in New York City. Shortly after she returned, Phillips was approached by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing patients in multiple states who were denied medically necessary abortions. The lawsuit seeks to ensure that pregnant patients can access abortion when their own health is at risk, and to give doctors clarity on which "medical emergencies" are exempted from state abortion bans. Phillips also met with her state representative, Republican Jeff Burkhart, to tell him her story. She wanted to ask for his help writing Miley's Law, which she hoped would expand abortion options for parents when a fetus is diagnosed with severe anomalies. When Phillips told him about her pregnancy loss and mentioned her older daughter, "He said, 'I thought women could only have a miscarriage in their first pregnancy,'" Phillips recalls. "The lack of knowledge, the lack of education, is astounding." That's when she began to think about running for his seat. Read the Story » Share This Story

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