‘We Have No Choice’: One Woman’s Ordeal with Texas’ New Sonogram Law
This is what government intrusion on a woman’s choice has wrought. It’s heartbreaking.
Halfway through my pregnancy, I learned that my baby was ill. Profoundly so. My doctor gave us the news kindly, but still, my husband and I weren’t prepared. Just a few minutes earlier, we’d been smiling giddily at fellow expectant parents as we waited for the doctor to see us. In a sonography room smelling faintly of lemongrass, I’d just had gel rubbed on my stomach, just seen blots on the screen become tiny hands. For a brief, exultant moment, we’d seen our son—a brother for our 2-year-old girl.
Yet now my doctor was looking grim and, with chair pulled close, was speaking of alarming things. “I’m worried about your baby’s head shape,” she said. “I want you to see a specialist—now.”
My husband looked angry, and maybe I did too, but it was astonishment more than anger. Ours was a profound disbelief that something so bad might happen to people who think themselves charmed. We already had one healthy child and had expected good fortune to give us two.
Instead, before I’d even known I was pregnant, a molecular flaw had determined that our son’s brain, spine and legs wouldn’t develop correctly. If he were to make it to term—something our doctor couldn’t guarantee—he’d need a lifetime of medical care. From the moment he was born, my doctor told us, our son would suffer greatly.
So, softly, haltingly, my husband asked about termination. The doctor shot me a glance that said: Are you okay to hear this now? I nodded, clenched my fists and focused on the cowboy boots beneath her scrubs.
She started with an apology, saying that despite being responsible for both my baby’s care and my own, she couldn’t take us to the final stop. The hospital with which she’s affiliated is Catholic and doesn’t allow abortion. It felt like a physical blow to hear that word, abortion, in the context of our much-wanted child. Abortion is a topic that never seemed relevant to me; it was something we read about in the news or talked about politically; it always remained at a safe distance. Yet now its ugly fist was hammering on my chest.
My doctor went on to tell us that, just two weeks prior, a new Texas law had come into effect requiring that women wait an extra 24 hours before having the procedure. Moreover, Austin has only one clinic providing second-trimester terminations, and that clinic might have a long wait. “Time is not on your side,” my doctor emphasized gently. For this reason, she urged us to seek a specialist’s second opinion the moment we left her office. “They’re ready for you,” she said, before ushering us out the back door to shield us from the smiling patients in the waiting room.
The specialist confirmed what our doctor had feared and sketched a few diagrams to explain. He hastily drew cells growing askew, quick pen-strokes to show when and where life becomes blighted. How simple, I thought, to just undraw those lines and restore my child to wholeness. But this businesslike man was no magician, and our bleak choices still lay ahead.
We need to fight back. We can fight back, if we do it together. That’s what my new Team Uterati Wiki Project is for. (The Team Uterati blog is here.)
We are tracking all anti-women/anti-reproductive rights/anti-choice legislation on a state-by-state basis, as well as providing resources for women’s health. We’re already making great progress. Check out the wiki pages for Pennsylvania, Arizona, and North Carolina. If you want to help, sign up for Team Uterati wiki here, introduce yourself in the forums here, and/or fill out a volunteer application here. 65 people (men and women) have already signed up.
It may seem daunting, but my webninja has made extensive video tutorials. I’ve never built a wiki page before; yesterday I built two.
We are not helpless.
That was truly heartbreaking. It’s as if we’ve totally gone back in time to a point where girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school and if they got pregnant they were sent away to a home for unwed mothers. Is this not the 21st century? Hasn’t the Supreme Court already stated that we have the right to control our own bodies? It really makes me violently angry in a way that few other issues do.
“Hasn’t the Supreme Court already stated we have the right to control our own bodies?”
Indeed! I really don’t know why we haven’t legal teams challenging these laws every day. The GOP is carving away our rights bit by bit & we’ve got to STAND & FIGHT THIS!!!
Because there are enough neocon twits on the SCOTUS that there’s a very real risk of them overturning Roe.
This was heart breaking to read. My Sister-in-law had to have a late stage termination of a much wanted child when something similar to this woman’s problem was found with their baby. The pain of loss was horrible for her but this happened some years ago before all the evil we have now. So, she at least didn’t have to be tortured before the procedure.
I’ve registered for Teamuterati. I will do what I can.
ABL, you’re a lawyer. Can’t we get a legal team or ACLU to fight these laws in court especially since they really impact low income women & POC. Rich women have more options, poor women don’t.
I have a friend who had to terminate a late-term baby, and it just tore her up emotionally. The little girl had many problems, and if she were brought to term she would have required 24/7 care, and she probably would not have lived past the age of 5. This woman had 3 other children at the time, and she and her husband weren’t exactly rolling in dough. Even with insurance, it would have strained their finances beyond belief.
She and her husband agonized over the decision. Contrary to what some people on the right think, abortion is not a walk in the park, especially a late-term one like my friend had.
I am as sad for the woman in the story as I was about my friend and what she went through. The one thing my friend did NOT have to go through was all of the unnecessary crap that some states are now forcing women to go through.
The stories above are sad, moving and detail nightmares no one would want to experience. However, it is the horrific exception in a society that has allowed and encouraged the murder of 50 million babies, most of whom were killed (the term is accurate) for convenience. Most agree that women should have the right to manage their own bodies, but this right begins before intercourse…none of us have forgotten that intercourse is the actual cause of unwanted pregnancy. How is it considered brutal to force a women to examine her choice to murder?
It seems so strange to consider that some fight so hard to defend a ruling created when medical science was so less able to define when life begins. Where does this knowledge fall into the decision-making process now? How can anyone deny a human the right to live just because that human can not yet speak? And who will speak for that human. An ultrasound can be the only voice for many.
You are confusing babies with fetuses, and your rhetoric is not welcome here. If you care about lives, champion for the actual babies – you know, the ones who can breathe on their own outside of a woman’s body. There is no medical necessity for this kind of sonogram, so you are advocating the violation of a woman’s body solely to satisfy your definition of ‘life’.
I mainly question the complete disregard for scientific facts to justify procedures that would be considered cruel and inhuman in any other situation. When we know that a fetus can feel pain, is it still okay to try to classify it as less-than-human? Who will speak for them?
WOMEN feel pain — including the anguish of an unplanned pregnancy that comes with a host of issues (financial, emotional, physical) that they and they alone fully understand better than the misogynist legislatures and the fetus fetishists who spend far more time and effort on protecting the “sanctity” of tissue than of people who are already here.
WOMEN have the right to agency over their own bodies. MY life is a human life and my right to a SAFE LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE is paramount over the rights of others to force their definitions of when life begins (not even all religions agree on this, btw) on my body and those of other women. Who speaks for me? I do. If you do not, then I have no use for you. And I don’t think anyone else here does, either.