Why she had to choose an abortion in her 2nd trimester

Brut America

"Why did I have to fly to another state to get the care I needed?"  At 15 weeks, she was given two options: terminating the pregnancy or waiting to miscarry.

Transcript

00:00Nobody wakes up in the morning and says,

00:02oh, I think I'll have an abortion today.

00:04That's just not true.

00:20With this condition, it was 100% incompatible with life.

00:24My baby did not have a functioning brain.

00:28And to this day, I still have the ultrasound pictures

00:32that I share with people so they can really, really see

00:35and understand what I was feeling.

00:38Up until that point,

00:39I thought it was a perfectly healthy pregnancy.

00:43And so hearing that news was extremely devastating to me.

00:47What was more devastating

00:49is that my doctor gave me two choices.

00:53And one was to terminate the pregnancy

00:56and two was to continue to carry the baby

00:59until I miscarried.

01:01And not knowing when I would miscarry,

01:03because these babies typically miscarry early

01:06in the pregnancy,

01:07my doctor said if I was to go to term

01:10that it would be a stillbirth.

01:12And so the option that I chose immediately

01:16was to terminate the pregnancy.

01:17I asked the doctor,

01:19so does that mean you admit me to the hospital?

01:23How do we now terminate the pregnancy?

01:26And the doctor said to me,

01:28well, in the state of Texas,

01:30it is considered an abortion

01:32and I would have to refer you out to an abortion clinic.

01:36Here I was with a fetal anomaly

01:38and yet I'm going through the same process

01:41that every person that has an abortion

01:43has to go through in the state of Texas.

01:46And I just couldn't believe that because it's our choice.

02:21Now in Florida, I did have to go through an ultrasound,

02:24but I did not have to look at the screen.

02:28And so when the doctor took the ultrasound,

02:31the first thing he said is,

02:33I am so sorry.

02:35I am so sorry.

02:36These cases are hard and we're gonna take care of you.

02:41And fortunately I was able to have the abortion.

02:45I was still confused about why I had to go

02:49through all of that to have the abortion.

02:52Why did I have to fly to another state

02:54to get the care that I needed?

02:57♪♪

03:09I knew that continuing to carry this pregnancy

03:12would be emotionally and physically traumatic.

03:16Oftentimes you hear,

03:17yeah, you can have an abortion

03:19in the cases of rape and incest,

03:21but it's very little about a fetal anomaly,

03:26especially one that is 100% incompatible with life.

03:30And so that's how I really entered into the advocacy

03:34on abortion care, on a woman's rights,

03:38and just shared my story over and over again

03:41to give individuals a different perspective

03:44of what it's like to have an abortion in late term.

03:47♪♪

04:01The fact that the court has taken this up

04:03means that they might want to look at their own precedent

04:08and make some changes.

04:09And that's really scary

04:10because what the question that the court is looking at

04:13is whether or not pre-viability abortion bans,

04:18so basically abortion bans before 24 to 28 weeks,

04:23which was promised by Roe, are constitutional.

04:27This is the moment that we've been warning about

04:31for a decade and the moment

04:32we've been really worried about for so long.

04:34♪♪

04:47No one knows what that person is going through

04:51when they have to make that decision.

04:53They could be in a domestic situation.

04:56They could be in situations where the doctor tells them,

04:59as the doctor told me, that this isn't a viable pregnancy.

05:03No one asks those questions.

05:06They just don't.

05:07After I spoke, there were a lot of people

05:10that came up to me and just commended me for my courage.

05:14And not only did they commend me for my courage,

05:18they also told me that they had a similar situation,

05:21but they told their friends and families

05:23that they had a miscarriage.

05:26So to me, that was confirmation that I wasn't alone.

05:34♪♪

05:39♪♪

05:44♪♪

05:49♪♪

05:54♪♪

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