MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell’s monologue took on a personal meaning on Tuesday as he emotionally described a procedure his mother once had to undergo – a procedure that was recently banned by Republican lawmakers in the US state of Georgia.

O’Donnell told his story after ProPublica reported this week that legislation passed in the southern state had led to the deaths of at least two women.

“ProPublica is now reporting on the death of a 28-year-old woman in Georgia who died because of what George W. Bush and Donald Trump did to her when they appointed these Supreme Court justices,” O’Donnell said before reading from the article, which said the woman needed a procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C), which removes tissue from inside the uterus.

Republican lawmakers in the state of Georgia decided that performing this routine procedure should be a crime.

The anchor of The last wordwho rebuked Trump for “acting like he doesn’t have blood on his hands,” and then told viewers that his mother needed the same procedure when he was six years old.

“My mother had given birth to five healthy children, but she kept going. She was trying to give her only daughter a sister. She was trying to have another one. And then she had a miscarriage and had a routine curettage at a local hospital in Boston, years before abortion was legal, because a curettage has absolutely nothing to do with abortion,” O’Donnell said.

“None of the Catholic nuns who taught me at my elementary school back then thought that my mother should not have this procedure. Our beloved Monsignor Brandley knew that doctors should provide the necessary care to mothers in St. Brendan’s Parish who suffered a miscarriage,” O’Donnell explained.

“Anti-abortion Catholic doctors routinely performed the procedure. There was not a single Irish Catholic politician in Boston – including the mayor and the district attorney – who ever tried to interfere with this medical procedure,” he continued. “Their sisters and daughters routinely had this procedure performed in anti-abortion Boston because it has nothing to do with abortion. Nothing.”

O’Donnell then imagined a scenario in which what was happening now would have happened to his mother back then.

“If a politician gets involved in this process and –” O’Donnell began, holding his breath. “– killed my mother when I was six years old, who is going to tell this boy? Who is going to tell this six-year-old how his mother died and who is really responsible?”

What the Republicans did in Georgia was “pure madness, criminal madness, murderous madness,” he said.

O’Donnell compared her actions to a ban on in vitro fertilization (IVF), noting that Republican senators blocked a bill establishing a national right to in vitro fertilization on Tuesday. Only two of the 49 Republicans in the chamber supported the bill along with Democrats.

Trump recently declared the Republican Party the “leader in IVF,” but his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, chose to campaign rather than cast his vote.