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The New Face of "Pro-Life" in 2024 - Personal Stories

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I decided to create a general thread for reproductive care stories and how the laws have affected women that need it.
I wish I had started it sooner. Please feel free to add

One day to make a life-changing decision​

Angel, age 30

State: Ohio

Note: NPR agreed to only use Angel's first name because she fears professional repercussions as a health care provider.

I had my first child last year in August 2021. My husband and I were open to having a second child but we wanted to go through adoption or fostering. But honestly, we were unsure if we really wanted another child in general.

I struggled with hormonal contraception due to a family history of clotting disorders and unwanted side effects. I was on the [birth control] drug Phexxi and was trying to track my menstrual cycle, which was extremely abnormal since I was just finishing up breastfeeding. My cycle ranged from 21 days to 39 days.

At the end of July 2022, I noticed my breasts becoming very engorged and sore all of the time, I also realized I might be a few days late for my period. I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive. I had extremely conflicting feelings. I called my usual OBGYN to discuss my options. The receptionist simply stated they do not offer that type of consultation, but I could come in for a pregnancy test. Since Ohio had a "heartbeat" abortion ban, I knew that would just be a waste of time and I needed someone to perform an ultrasound ASAP.

I then called Planned Parenthood and got an appointment for the very next day. They advised me I was already five weeks and five days pregnant. They told me I need to make the decision as soon as possible based on the ultrasound. So I made the appointment for the very next day and went through with the abortion.

I cannot believe I only had a day to truly decide. It felt so rushed.

 
Last edited:

Getting pregnant 'could be dangerous' so she faced a stark choice​

Jenni Miller, age mid-30s

State: Ohio

I have rheumatoid arthritis, which means my immune system attacks my joints, causing excruciating pain if not properly medicated. I cannot manage my illness without methotrexate, a drug that is also sometimes used as an abortifacient.

When I started this drug, my rheumatologist and OBGYN made sure that I was using at least two methods of birth control. My doctors told me that getting pregnant could be dangerous. I could conceive, but a fetus cannot survive inside my body. I made the decision ahead of time that I would get an abortion if that happened.

After Roe vs. Wade was overturned, the politicians in my state began working to ban abortion. They would force me to carry a deformed and dying fetus until its last heartbeat. How devastatingly cruel to me, and to a fetus. It would die slowly inside my body, putting me in danger while I waited to get an abortion.

I considered just staying on the pill or getting an IUD, but Ohio women are worried that birth control could be taken away from us too. I considered tying my tubes, but I could still have an ectopic pregnancy and couldn't deal with the thought that I could die on an operating table.

None of these options felt irreversible enough, so last summer, I had my fallopian tubes removed completely.

It's the right decision for me. I'm in my mid-30s and that window is closing anyway. I've always been committed to adopting if I decide to have kids because of the toll going off of my meds and pregnancy would take on my body.

 

When her water broke too early, there were no abortion providers to help​

Dani Rios, 40
State: Texas

Law: Banned with very limited exceptions

In December 2022, right before Christmas, I was 20 weeks and 3 days pregnant when I learned my water had broken early. The chances of the baby surviving were very low, but I couldn't end the pregnancy under Texas laws.

My family was so supportive, they started calling clinics in New Mexico and booking flights for me and my husband, but the clinic appointments were not available for weeks. I developed an infection and went to the hospital shortly after. There was no longer a fetal heartbeat, but there were no providers who could perform a second trimester abortion. It would have been legal, but all the providers have shut down.


I asked to be cut open. I wanted to be put asleep and not have to experience anything else. The doctors would not give me a c-section. Instead, I was induced and went through labor and delivery. I do not feel the medical team helping me at the hospital is to blame, they were doing the best they could under the circumstances.

It is so cruel to force a woman to give birth to her dead baby – to be awake and present, to endure in the most traumatic way possible the loss of her baby and hope and motherhood. It made an awful, senseless situation even worse.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...rtion-bans-personal-stories-dobbs-anniversary
 

'A mad dash' to understand a fetal anomaly​

Samantha Spontak, age 33

State: Florida

Law: Abortion is legal through 15-weeks of pregnancy, though lawmakers are trying to make the limit 6-weeks – a court challenge is ongoing

When I was about nine-and-half weeks pregnant, Florida instituted a 15-week abortion ban. We had only just seen the OB for the first time maybe a week prior. At 11 weeks, we found out something could potentially be wrong with the baby, so it was a mad dash to get all of these tests done and hope we would have clearer answers before that 15th week hit. We found out officially at 13 weeks that our baby had a chromosomal issue and a heart defect. Instead of having the time to do research and see how it was affecting her growth and development, we had to put trust in our doctors when they told us she would only have a 3-5% chance of survival.

At 14 weeks, we officially terminated our pregnancy. I hear and read stories of women and couples being able to wait and make better plans and do better tests, and we didn't have that option. My husband and I don't regret our decision, because with the knowledge and guidance we were given, we absolutely did what was best for our family. But the idea that we could have had more time to figure it all out sits very heavy on my heart every day.

​

 

A couple quickly uproots to try to make a family​

Hillary, 35

State: Texas to Massachusetts

Law: Texas bans abortion with very limited exceptions. Massachusetts allows abortion until 24 weeks gestation.

Note: NPR agreed to only use Hillary's first name because she fears professional repercussions as a health care provider.

I am a proud Texan and love my roots. My early childhood is full of memories of riding four wheelers and fishing on the Texas coast. But when the draft overturning Roe v. Wade leaked in May 2022, my husband and I promptly decided to uproot our lives and move to a state where we felt safe.

We had been trying to conceive for over two years with no success. We knew in vitro fertilization was in our future, but what was that going to look like in Texas? Would genetic testing go away? Would reproductive specialists leave for protected states, causing a physician shortage? If world-renowned infertility doctors didn't have these answers, how could I?

While I've always been a fighter, I could not handle the stress or idea of having medical complications during a future pregnancy and not being able to get the life saving care I would need. With us being in our mid 30s, we didn't have time on our side to stay behind, fight the good fight, and hope the laws change. Not to mention, the older you are the higher risk the pregnancy becomes. We decided in May 2022 to move to Massachusetts, where we knew we would have agency over our own health care and state-mandated IVF insurance coverage. Within three months, we sold our house, said goodbye to our friends and family, and started a new life.

I have now gone through two rounds of IVF resulting in four embryos. The process was grueling, but mentally I felt better knowing that I was in good hands with medical professionals who are allowed to practice without fear of jail time. While I miss my family and friends in Houston, I am thankful I listened to my gut instinct and moved to a state that protects my body and respects my choices.

We are lucky we had the means to make such a big move but so many do not. I struggle with that – knowing so many people in states restricting abortion access are stuck.

 

Driving home from emergency surgery, fear at every rest stop​

Delmy J. Chavez, age 36

State: Texas

Law: Banned with very limited exceptions

Last August, while on a cruise, I experienced tremendous abdominal pain. I asked my partner to take me to the medical floor of the ship. The doctor informed me that I was pregnant and that I was losing blood. She ran through possible scenarios for what could be causing the issues; from an unfinished miscarriage to infection.

The doctor kept me there overnight until we got back to our home port where an ambulance took me directly to the emergency room. As the doctor handed my paperwork to the EMTs, she told them she suspected I was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. This was the first time she had mentioned it.

Once I arrived at the hospital in Galveston, Texas, I was informed that my blood levels were dangerously low. I was losing blood internally but we didn't know the cause. I was given my first blood bag of the day. The next thing was to do a sonogram. No heartbeat or gestational sac were found. After some time, an OB/GYN came into my room and informed me I'd have to have emergency surgery for what appeared to be an ectopic pregnancy.

I was devastated. And I was scared. I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

Roe v. Wade had been overturned just a few months before my situation. I had been reading how the termination of an ectopic pregnancy [could be treated] as abortion. A Texas trigger law was in effect, making abortion a felony. Additionally, Texas had also passed a law, allowing private citizens to sue anyone aiding, assisting or performing an abortion.

There is a narrow exception in the laws where the life of the mother is at risk. Mine apparently was. I learned after my surgery that the fetus had grown so large it ruptured my fallopian tube. They had to remove that tube. This was the source of my blood loss and abdominal pain.

After I was discharged, my partner and I decided to drive back home to Dallas, which was about four hours away, that same night. Every time we stopped at a rest stop, I was afraid someone would see me and know what had happened and accuse me of murder. It was an irrational thought, but living in this state post-Roe feels dangerous.

As painful as the whole experience was, both physically and emotionally, I know that I was fortunate to have been provided care. In the months since my ordeal, I've vacillated between anger and sadness over what is happening with these laws. It shouldn't have to be this way.

 

Waiting weeks for a wanted abortion, paralyzed by fear​

Anna, age 41

State: Louisiana

Law: Banned with very limited exceptions

Note: NPR agreed to only use Anna's first name because of her fears of legal retaliation by Louisiana officials.

I found out I was pregnant June 20, 2022. It was unplanned and unwanted. My partner and I are both in our 40s. He has children from previous relationships and I had never been pregnant before. We were both shocked.

I knew Roe was in danger of falling any day so I called one of the only remaining clinics in Louisiana immediately to schedule an appointment. It took several tries to get through. The woman who finally picked up the phone sounded rushed and frazzled. They must have also known what was coming so they scheduled me for my first appointment for the following Saturday at 7:30 a.m.

I made a backup appointment at a Planned Parenthood in the northern state I grew up in, just in case. The earliest appointment I could schedule was three weeks away. I didn't really think I'd need it.

On Friday morning, the day before my appointment in Louisiana, the news dropped. The Dobbs ruling ended my right to a safe and legal abortion. My partner left work and came to my house to be with me. I felt like everything in my periphery was dark and I was in a tunnel. I felt lonely and abandoned even though I was surrounded by people who loved and supported me.

Although my Saturday appointment was canceled, a court injunction was filed and the trigger law that had gone into effect was temporarily halted. When you are pregnant and don't want to be, every additional second that you remain pregnant feels like a betrayal. Physical and psychological torture. I called the New Orleans clinic 20 times in a row before I got through and was able to reschedule my appointment for a few days later.
<continued>

 

More women who’ve been denied abortions are going public with their stories​

Having an abortion was something most women used to keep private. But since Roe v. Wade was overturned, some women have decided to go public in interviews, at protests and in lawsuits. And increasingly, they are becoming a political force. Rosemary Westwood at member station WWNO spoke with two of these women about why they turned their personal suffering into activism.

ROSEMARY WESTWOOD, BYLINE: Nancy Davis was 10 weeks pregnant in the summer of 2022 when she learned her fetus didn't have a skull. It was a fatal condition called acrania. But because of Louisiana's abortion ban, her doctors in Baton Rouge refused to terminate her pregnancy.
<snipped>

KAITLYN JOSHUA: I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life.

WESTWOOD: Joshua went to two different emergency rooms. The abortion ban was just over a month old, and doctors refused to end her pregnancy. She ended up miscarrying at home in great pain. It was frightening. Eventually, Joshua also decided to speak about her trauma to the media and started traveling with the Biden and then the Harris presidential campaign. At the convention, she said women were constantly reaching out with similar stories.

KATE COX: How many people have to speak up? How many women have to tell their most painful journey publicly before something changes?

WESTWOOD: This November, 10 states will ask voters whether to add abortion rights to their state constitutions, and Harris is counting on this issue to help lead her to victory. Will these women and their abortion stories play a decisive role? There is some evidence they could. Tresa Undem is a political pollster.

Details of stories at link:

 

A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital​

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.​


Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”

More:

A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.
www.propublica.org



Josseli Barnica
 

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.​

At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.​


In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.

She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.

Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.

It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.

At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.
www.propublica.org
 

Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?​

Excerpt:
Seven weeks into her pregnancy, in late January, 2022, Yeni messaged Andrew: “Slight breathing problems.” A few days later, she woke up bleeding. Her first instinct was to call her mother. ‘Does it hurt?,’ Leticia asked. It didn’t, but Yeni was too scared to trust her mother’s theory that miscarriages were accompanied by pain. She raced to the E.R., where her case was termed a “threatened miscarriage.” An ultrasound showed normal fetal growth; her blood pressure, however, had spiked to a worrisome 185/98.

Although some women with the same conditions as Yeni—hypertension, diabetes, a history of pulmonary edema, severe obesity—end up safely delivering healthy babies, others become so unwell that a difficult question arises: Is this a pregnancy that the patient can safely continue? Some studies show that cardiovascular diseases account for more than a third of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. “When a pregnant patient comes to you with a history of pulmonary edema, the question is: What is the cause, and can it be managed or reversed?,” Uri Elkayam, the director of the maternal-cardiology program at the University of Southern California, told me. “Pregnancy increases blood volume, and with limited cardiac reserves the pressure from the heart may be reflected into the lungs, causing pulmonary edema and heart failure.” His rule of thumb is that, if a patient is fairly sick early on, “one needs to assume that as pregnancy progresses things only will get worse.” In those cases, he said, termination lowers the risk of death.

Complete story at link:

Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?

As many conservatives hail the fall of Roe for saving unborn lives, high-risk pregnancy becomes even more perilous.
www.newyorker.com
 

‘Heartbreaking’ stories go untold, doctors say, as employers ‘muzzle’ them in wake of abortion ruling​

After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, an obstetrician who works at a hospital in the Northeast thought she could make a difference by publicly describing what she was seeing, by telling the stories of the patients she saw suffering in the aftermath of the court’s historic court ruling.

So when a reporter from The New York Times reached out, she was grateful for the opportunity to discuss the plight of patients traveling to her hospital from states that had abortion restrictions.

The doctor sent along the questions and answers and received a resounding “no” from the PR official: “We ask that you do not comment to the NY Times at this time.”

“They’re censoring me,” the doctor told CNN. “It’s shameful and embarrassing to work for an institution that is not supportive of women’s rights.

“I’m extremely angry,” she added. “It’s disgusting.”

A physician in another state echoed her: “I feel shackled. I feel muzzled. I feel completely restrained, and I’m outraged.”

These two doctors, and six others interviewed by CNN, say their employers – major public and private medical centers in five states – have asked them to not speak publicly about abortion, or have instructed them that if they do speak publicly about abortion, they can do so only as private citizens and cannot mention where they work.

Even when they are permitted to speak about abortion as private citizens, these doctors say, their employers have made it clear that they would prefer the doctors not talk at all, and so they have hesitated to speak up.

More:
 

You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative​

It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there have been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies. Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing.

Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement for spooking doctors into not intervening when pregnancies go horribly wrong. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.
Others have suggested that doctors are deliberately refusing miscarriage treatment, apparently to make anti-abortion laws look bad. “What we’re seeing, I fear, is doctors with an agenda saying, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do’ when, in fact, they do,” the president of Ohio Right to Life said last year.

A new filing in a Texas lawsuit demolishes these arguments. In March, five women represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights sued Texas after enduring medical nightmares when they were refused abortions for pregnancies that had gone awry. Since then, the Center for Reproductive Rights says it has heard from dozens of women in Texas with similar accounts. And this week, eight more women, each with her own harrowing story, joined the suit, which asks a state district court to clarify the scope of emergency medical exceptions to Texas’ abortion ban.
More:

Opinion | You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative (Published 2023)

If this isn’t what anti-abortion groups want, why won’t they fix it?
www.nytimes.com
 
Well I'll just say that with about a million abortions performed each year, there are probably MANY MORE examples of abortions refused, with or without fear for the woman's life.

Abortion is a RIGHT. Any reason or no reason.

We don't require people to give a reason why they should be allowed to buy a firearm. THAT is what a RIGHT looks like.
 
Sad. This is why Harris will win, it's our reproductive care and woman are getting injured, and dying without it.

We are not pets, we are human beings. Mr. Trump says he'll protect women after abusing us, nah, we'll protect ourselves from you!!

We will come out in droves and we will win back our human right to healthcare!
 
Anybody with a brain and compassion should support women's rights.

These stories are heart-breaking to read. Voters need to just imagine what living them feels like.

Or in some cases dying because of these draconian laws, which are all part of the maga and Donald nightmare.

Vote for Kamala Harris.

Vote for Kamala Harris.

Vote for Kamala Harris like women's lives depend on it.

Because they do.
 
None of these anecdotal stories change my mind about abortion bans at all. Far more lives have been saved than killed by abortion bans because abortion ends a life.
 
 
 
collected said:
None of these anecdotal stories change my mind about abortion bans at all. Far more lives have been saved than killed by abortion bans because abortion ends a life.
Click to expand...
They're not anecdotal, comrade. They're in the news - this actually happened.

I have a wife and daughter. I can only imagine the horror of losing them both only 18 months ago to some draconian, Talibornagain, Christofascist law just because my wife might have had pregnancy complications. I can only imagine the same in 18 years if it's my daughter's turn.

It's disgusting. Imagine the rage their families must feel. If it's about tHuH biBUhL, how about an eye for an eye? How about the possibilty of an arrest, a trial, the death penalty for politicians who made this happen? No chance they'll even go to jail or get a fine. The only recourse we have is to vote them out and they'll still go unpunished.

So everyone should get out and vote this RoeVember.
 
collected said:
None of these anecdotal stories change my mind about abortion bans at all. Far more lives have been saved than killed by abortion bans because abortion ends a life.
Click to expand...
So what? "Life" isn't really the issue. Abortion simply ends an unwanted and/or dangerous pregnancy. The "life" and choice that matters is the woman's.
 

I have read that women are having more abortions just because they cant risk waiting and figuring out their support networks, finances, work situations, etc. and then not being allowed to have one if needed. So they are having them to 'play it safe.'

Well done conservatives and anti-abortites!

 
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