‘Baby killers work here’
Following her 10-hour drive to Albuquerque, Ms. DeSpain encountered lines of protesters at the clinic. They were holding signs that said, “Abortion is murder,” and “Baby killers work here.”
“Please don’t kill your baby – we have resources for you,” a woman screeched through a megaphone as Ms. DeSpain, nearly 20 weeks’ pregnant, stepped out of the car to enter the clinic.
“I remember turning around, looking at her and making eye contact, and yelling back, ‘My baby has triploidy – he is dying! He is going to suffocate if I carry him full term. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ “
A nurse held her hand during the procedure.
“He said, ‘You’re doing great, you’re okay,’ “ she recalls. She knew there was a chance that Finley’s face would be crushed by contractions during labor because of the lack of amniotic fluid, but she hoped not. Ms. DeSpain longed for a photo.
There was no photo to take home the next day, but Ms. DeSpain did receive Finley’s footprints, and his heartbeat – as captured by the specialty team in Houston – lives on in a stuffed giraffe.
His ashes arrived a few weeks later.
By then, the Supreme Court draft had been leaked. Ms. DeSpain knew her predicament in Texas would soon affect women across the United States and make any future pregnancy attempt for her even more risky.
The weeks and months that followed were a blur of grief, anger, and medical testing.
But she received some good news. A second triploidy pregnancy was extremely unlikely.
Several weeks later, Ms. DeSpain got more good news.
“I had a follow-up cancer appointment, and everything was completely clear,” she says.
She remains hopeful that she will be able to give birth, but her doctor cautioned that it’s no longer safe to become pregnant in Texas.
“I need you to understand that if you get pregnant and you have complications, we can’t intervene unless the baby doesn’t have a heartbeat, even if it would save your life,” Ms. DeSpain recalls her doctor saying.
If Texas remains a dangerous place to be pregnant, Ms. DeSpain and her husband will have to move.
For now, Ms. DeSpain wants people to know her story and to continue to fight for her right to govern her body.
In a public post to Facebook, she laid bare her pregnancy journey.
“No one should have to share a story like mine to justify abortion,” she wrote. “My choice is not yours to judge, and my rights are not yours to gleefully take away.”
Ms. Abrams, Ms. DeSpain, Dr. Harris, Dr. Jain, and Dr. Mims have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.