By Rebecca Boone | Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — Four women suing over Idaho’s strict abortion bans told a judge Tuesday how excitement over their pregnancies turned to grief and fear after they learned their fetuses were not likely to survive to birth — and how they had to leave the state to get abortions amid fears that pregnancy complications would put their own health in danger.
“We felt like we were being made refugees, medical refugees,” said Jennifer Adkins, one of the plaintiffs in the case.
The women, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, aren’t asking for the state’s abortion ban to be overturned. Instead, they want the judge to clarify and expand the exceptions to the strict ban so that people facing serious pregnancy complications can receive abortions before they are at death’s door.
Currently, the state’s near-total ban makes performing an abortion a felony at any stage of pregnancy unless it is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
Adkins’ fetus had a severe medical condition that meant it would not survive the pregnancy. The illness also put Adkins at risk of developing “mirror syndrome,” a dangerous syndrome that can cause fatally high blood pressure and other issues, she said.
Adkins and her husband decided to seek an abortion, and learned they would have to go out of state to get one after another ultrasound showed the fetus still had a heartbeat.
“No parent wants to wish that when they look at an ultrasound they don’t see their baby’s heartbeat, yet here I was hoping that I wouldn’t,” Adkins said. “I wanted the decision to be made for us, and I wanted to end her suffering, so it was really hard to see that and know that we had the challenges ahead of us that we did.”
Jilliane St. Michel and Rebecca Vincen-Brown shared similar stories, telling the judge how they were devastated when they learned their fetuses had severe conditions that were incompatible with life, and how being forced to travel out of state for abortion care complicated an already tragic experience.
Kayla Smith cried as she told the judge how she found out she was pregnant for a second time on Mother’s Day of 2022, and how she and her husband chose the name “Brooks” for their son. She was around 18 or 20 weeks along in her pregnancy when the sonographer grew quiet during a routine anatomy scan, Smith said.
Brooks’ heart had anomalies that were the most critical her doctor had ever seen — and the young family could not find a pediatric cardiologist anywhere who was willing to attempt an operation to correct the defects. Even if the heart could have been repaired, the veins supplying Brooks’ lungs were also abnormal, Smith said. It was possible that she could carry the fetus to term, but he would not survive birth, she said.
Smith already had experience with pregnancy complications. Her daughter was born by emergency c-section at 33 weeks after Smith developed preeclampsia, a …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
