Every time I’ve read a defense of abortion rights in the recent weeks, I’ve felt compelled to tell a story about abortion that doesn’t fit the usual mold, which is yet far more common than anyone realizes. It is a story that underlines that abortion is a medical procedure, the uses of which are not at all obvious to those who would outlaw this medical procedure.
My husband and I had our first child, and after two years, we decided we were ready for another. After supporting him through graduate school, I was enjoying my time off from being the family breadwinner and was putting myself fully into the stay-at-home mom role. A more traditional family model you could not look for, except I suppose that we used birth control to decide when we were ready for children. I went off birth control, and after a few months, we were delighted that I was pregnant, told all of our family and a few friends. For those of you who don’t know, you usually don’t go to the obstetrician to confirm the pregnancy until 10 weeks after your last period (generally about 8 weeks gestation), where the doctor should be able to detect the heartbeat using a Doppler microphone device. I went to see my doctor on a Friday, a few days shy of the 10 week mark. My doctor looked for the heartbeat again and again and could not find it. Her office does not have an ultrasound machine, which is a more precise and comprehensive tool, so she made an appointment for me at my local hospital to have an ultrasound done, hoping that it was just because of position or being slightly early for the usual timing.
At the hospital, the ultrasound showed the small kidney-bean shaped embryo, but usually you can see a little beating or pulsing spot that is the heart. There appeared to be no activity at all. Just to be sure, they also did the trans-vaginal version of the ultrasound, which allows them to view closer and from another angle. The techs left the room and sent in a doctor to talk to me. He said that from what they could see, the heart was not beating, which meant I had a dead embryo inside of my body that would never become a viable child.
I talked to my doctor that afternoon, and she laid out my options for me. She said I could wait for my body to naturally miscarry, as should normally happen in these cases, but there was a chance that my body would not miscarry. The medical term for this is a “missed abortion,” and in fact the medical term “abortion” refers to any loss of the products of conception, naturally or otherwise. She told me that if my body did not naturally miscarry, there was a risk that the decaying materials in my uterus could cause an infection, which could be dangerous to my health and possibly render me infertile thereafter. The other alternative was to have a “D&E” procedure, short for dilation and extraction, which is one of the medical procedures defined as abortion. I told her I’d like to wait a week to see if anything happened naturally, but that after that, I’d talk to her about having the D&E.
My body went on behaving for all the world like I was building a baby, including the voracious appetite and light nausea if I didn’t keep feeding myself regularly. My body was in complete denial that this baby was not growing anymore. I finally called my doctor and scheduled the outpatient surgery for the D&E.
Because my doctor was experienced at this procedure and could perform it at my local hospital, this was all easy for me. My husband came with me to the hospital 5 minutes from my house, and procedure took about an hour, I woke up from anesthesia with no pain, no cramping, and almost no residual bleeding in the days that followed. I was able to conceive my amazing, wonderful second child, my daughter, three months later. I was charged nothing for this procedure because my husband’s employer, a women’s college, understands that health insurance means reproductive health coverage.
I am one of the lucky ones. Women living in other places, where procedures are limited, where doctors aren’t trained, where hospitals refuse to do these procedures (especially those associated with the Catholic Church) can’t have the easy experience I had. Even others living where I do who work for employers who don’t understand that the complexity of a woman’s health care needs is her business alone would find the cost of such a procedure prohibitively expensive. Miscarriage and this kind of missed abortion are far more common than anyone realizes, and it is only after it happens to you and you tell people that everyone’s stories come out. I bet that each of you knows someone to whom this story will sound familiar.
Legislators, governors, and employers cannot possibly know the wide range of applications for any given medical treatment, nor should they be in any position to dictate which ones are permissible for whom and when. Leave the medical practicing to the medical practitioners.