Olympic gold medalist and World Cup winner Hope Solo has been making her voice heard in the world of soccer for years. Now, she’s using that voice to talk about a devastating miscarriage she experienced while she was running for president of the United States Soccer Federation last year.
In the July issue of Elle, Solo, the former goalkeeper of the U.S Women’s National Soccer Team, explained that she and her husband Jerramy Stevens had been trying to get pregnant for “a long period.” It had finally happened in early 2018—only for her to miscarry.
A week after the initial loss, Solo was still in a lot of pain. Doctors told her she’d actually been pregnant with twins, and one of the pregnancies was ectopic, meaning the fertilized egg implanted outside of the uterus. “The doctor said I was hours from dying,” she told Elle. “They ended up having to remove my fallopian tube.” She told Elle she’s now undergoing in-vitro fertilization.
Only days after an actual near-death experience, Solo was back in Orlando, Florida, giving a speech for the election — using her voice to stand up for issues she’d been fighting for during the rest of her campaign, such as equal pay for female and male soccer players. “That speech took a lot,” she told Elle. “Even before all that, it would have taken courage.”