More than a year after a Catholic mother’s death, a pro-abortion writer has lied about her story and is using it to attack women who refuse abortion due to their pro-life convictions.
Key Takeaways:
- Jessica Hanna was 14 weeks pregnant with her fourth child when she learned she had stage 4 terminal breast cancer.
- Doctors urged her to have an abortion, but she was told her prognosis and treatment would remain the same whether she was pregnant or not.
- She refused an abortion and was able to undergo chemotherapy with modifications during pregnancy.
- She gave birth to a healthy baby boy and was declared cancer-free.
- More than a year after her son was born, she was diagnosed with cancer a second time in December 2022, and she died in April 2024.
- Abortion supporter Jessica Valenti recently shared a video in which she claimed that pro-lifers consider Hanna to be “cancer-free” because she died, and uses Hanna’s story to disparage pro-life women who choose life in the face of a serious diagnosis.
The Details:
When Catholic mom Jessica Hanna faced a breast cancer diagnosis while pregnant with her fourth child, she fought with bravery and grace — and after her son was born, she was declared cancer-free. Sadly, the cancer later returned, and Hanna died more than three years after her original diagnosis.
Pro-abortion writer Jessica Valenti — basing her response on a 2025 social media post from LifeNews recirculating Hanna’s story — recently took to TikTok to discuss Jessica Hanna in a post that read, “Apparently, she’s cancer free because she died. Had to read through the replies.”
“Do you want to know why this woman is cancer-free?” said Valenti in her video. “This woman, who declined to have an abortion even though she had a life-threatening illness. She’s cancer-free because she’s dead. She’s dead.”
The article Valenti showed in her TikTok video is nearly three years old, and Hanna was still alive at the time it was published.
“I found out about this story through this tweet, which is going viral right now, and thank goodness it is because we need to have this conversation,” she said. “Feminists have been screaming about this for years. About the way that conservatives are valorizing, strategically valorizing women who die for their pregnancies and the way that strategy has increased, skyrocketed since the end of Roe.”
@auntiekilljoy I’m glad that the woman at the center of this story was able to make the *choice* she felt was right for her and her family. But what’s happening here is horrifying: conservatives are valorizing these stories strategically—they want to make the skyrocketing maternal mortality rate not just more palatable, but *positive* #greenscreen #fyp #politics ♬ original sound – Jessica Valenti
Valenti said she predicted that this would happen after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 — but Hanna was first diagnosed with cancer in 2021 when Roe was still in place.
Valenti claimed that the pro-life message is “that if you were a really good mother, you would die for your pregnancy…”
Valenti then went on to claim that maternal mortality is skyrocketing in pro-life states, and pro-life media are painting these women as “amazing” and “brave.”
“Yeah, the maternal mortality is going up, but look, we have a nation full of f***ing heroes,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, women dying for their pregnancies is not just collateral damage to them. It’s not just an unfortunate side effect of abortion bans. This is our job, this is what we’re supposed to do. If we were really good mothers, if we were really good women, we would be willing to give up everything for our pregnancies, including our lives.”
Nearly everything Valenti presented about Hanna’s story is inaccurate and false, but she used the story anyway to create her own narrative.
It’s not just disrespectful; it’s entirely dishonest.
The Actual Timeline:
- December 2020 — Jessica Hanna was first diagnosed with breast cancer at 14 weeks pregnant with her fourth child. She consulted multiple doctors, and while some advised abortion, they said her prognosis and treatment would be the same regardless.
- Spring 2021 — Hanna, a devout Catholic and pro-lifer, underwent chemotherapy with modifications while pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy in the spring. Shortly after giving birth, she was declared cancer-free.
- September 2022 — Hanna told her story to EWTN. LifeNews and Live Action News both shared her story that same month, noting that she was cancer-free.
- December 2022 — Tragically, Hanna’s cancer returned. By then, Hanna’s son was about one and a half years old. The cancer was Stage 4, and despite treatments, it spread to her lymph nodes, bones, and lungs. She continued to fight just as she did during pregnancy and inspired others through her social media account, Blessed By Cancer.
- January 2023 — Hanna posted on Instagram: “In my life as I look back I praise God for the hard times because those were the times He called me closer to Him. Those were the times that I finally got up and stripped myself of the world, emptied myself of temporary things in order to fill my soul with the eternal.”
- April 2024 — Jessica Hanna passed away. Her son, by this time, was about three years old.
- August 2025 — Valenti shared Hanna’s story, showing a screenshot of a LifeNews tweet from August 2. That tweet reshared a 2022 article announcing that Hanna had been declared cancer-free. Then Valenti spun the truth and claimed that Hanna was only cancer-free “because she’s dead.” It is unclear why LifeNews reshared the article more than a year after Hanna’s death, but it is not uncommon for media outlets to reshare stories that were popular when they were first published.
Why It Matters:
Valenti doesn’t seem to have cared enough to read up on Hanna’s life, but made assumptions about her instead and then spread those assumptions to her more than 300,000 followers. But let’s be clear: whether Valenti likes it or not, Hanna is a hero, especially to her family. To say otherwise is hard-hearted.
What pro-lifers celebrated back in 2022 was Hanna’s steadfastness and bravery in facing cancer while pregnant and in fighting for her own life and the life of her child. She fought. And she won. That is a cause for celebration.
But Valenti has a mission: to dehumanize preborn children. She does this by claiming Hanna ‘died for her pregnancy’ as if Hanna put a ‘disease’ above her own life. Pregnancy isn’t a disease; it’s the condition of sustaining a new life. That life in her womb was her son (not “a pregnancy,” as Valenti put it) and Hanna refused to kill him even when it meant she could be risking her own health and life.
Pro-lifers honor her bravery and strength, celebrated with her when she overcame cancer, and were heartbroken with her family when her cancer returned. Her son knew her for three years of his life outside the womb, and she knew him. How was this not a blessing to both Hanna and her little boy?
Hanna’s death, however, was and is not celebrated by anyone, except perhaps Valenti and her pro-abortion cronies, who are now exploiting Hanna’s death to promote abortion.
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