Why A 20-Week Abortion Ban Is Scary For All Women
in US News, Women's StoriesA mom and OB courageously shares her heartbreaking 20-week abortion experience and how she made the decision to end her pregnancy.
“The atmosphere in the room changed. It changed from, “I can’t see…” to, “I should be seeing…”. He was using words like overriding and stenosis – words that I know, but wasn’t really hearing. At some point, he reached out, touched my hand, and said, “It’s nothing you did,” and it wasn’t until that moment that I knew something was really wrong. I think he assumed that because I’m an OB, I knew exactly what I should be seeing. But I don’t do these complex heart views, and to be honest, I’m not sure I would have caught it on my own.
The high-risk doctor came in. We know him personally as well. He and the sonographer kept scanning and talking about what they saw. We were still too early, the heart was too small, they couldn’t say exactly what the problem was. We left knowing that there was “something going on with the heart,” but little more.
We were offered an amniocentesis while we were there, but I was scared. I didn’t think the results would be helpful. I had already had a negative screening test. The 20 week, 6 day deadline for termination of pregnancy in our state was mentioned, but I didn’t give it a lot of thought. The amnio results might not even be back at that point. There was a heart defect, and that was scary, but we would deal with it.”
