Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) has become the first sitting U.S. senator to share his personal experience with abortion.

He faces a close re-election race this year. In an interview with Elle magazine’s Laura Bassett, Peters discussed how his first wife, Heidi, was denied an abortion in the 1980s despite her life being at risk.

Bassett wrote that Heidi ‘was four months along when her water broke, leaving the fetus without amniotic fluid—a condition it could not possibly survive.’ She was told to wait for a natural miscarriage, but when it never occurred, her doctor suggested getting an abortion.

The local Detroit hospital had banned the procedure, so the couple again waited for a miscarriage to no avail. Heidi’s health quickly deteriorated; she was on the verge of losing her uterus and contracting a potentially deadly infection if she did not get an abortion.

Ultimately, the couple was able to get to another hospital that conducted the life-saving procedure.

When speaking with Bassett, Peters explained that his wife’s story shows ‘how gut-wrenching and complicated decisions can be related to reproductive health.’

Women’s reproductive rights are again at the forefront of political matters as Judge Amy Coney Barrett is in the midst of her Senate confirmation hearings to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court for life.

A top choice of religious right and anti-abortion activists, Barrett has made statements in the past that referred to abortion as 'always immoral' and Roe v. Wade as 'barbaric.’

If confirmed, analysts say Barrett would push the court further right than it has been since 1950 and lock in a conservative majority, potentially for decades, putting the health and possibly lives of women across the country at risk.