Reply to My abortion story

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "My abortion story"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]June 24, the day the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,was my 40th birthday.  I was able to celebrate because abortion saved my life.

In September 2020, I had my 20 week anatomy scan for a pregnancy we very much wanted.  That the fetus’s kidneys and lungs were not developing, there was fluid around the heart, I had no amniotic fluid, and my placenta was severely degraded.  All my doctors agreed, the only choice was to terminate my pregnancy.

Thankfully, in MD and DC, abortion up to 24 weeks was legal.  Even so, I had to jump through many stressful, challenging hoops:  switching doctors to a practice who would perform the procedure; navigating Hyde Amendment restrictions on my Federal employee insurance; and being alone at appointments because of Covid restrictions.

I am thankful every day that I was able to get the care I needed at a hospital with an experienced and compassionate medical team.  The  the doctors could not stop me from  bleeding after the procedure.  I went into hypovolemic shock, lost 3x the amount of blood in my body, and formed blood clots in my hand and foot.  I woke up with a breathing tube in the ICU, all alone and in excruciating pain.  But I was alive.  I was in the ICU for 8 days.

The decision in Dobbs means that pregnant woman like me will die.  Even in states that provide exception for “life of the mother,” when abortion is so severely restricted, the care is not actually available.   Who gets to decide how likely it is that I’m going to die before I get the medical care I need? How will doctors be able to provide the care we need to save our lives?

All abortion is, in some way, to save the life of the mother.  I share my story as one example of the repercussions of denying reproductive health care to us.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics