What It Means to Have a Choice
We've fought too long and too hard.
September 2, 2015, was the last "normal" day before I became a bereaved parent. On September 3rd, I woke up thinking that my daughter was alive, only to find out later that day that she had died.
We'd learned a few weeks before that Nelle was growth restricted. The doctor looked at me and said, "She may never grow or develop normally."
The doctor also told me that in Illinois, we only had until 24 weeks to make a decision about the pregnancy. At the time, I was 19 weeks pregnant. I remember sobbing with my husband, saying, "I don't know. I don't know if I could end my pregnancy."
But I also knew that the choice might be painfully clear. That Nelle might have something incompatible with life. That she might not live, and there was nothing we could do. In that scenario, our choices were to let me continue my pregnancy and that she would die, maybe within a few weeks, or terminate the pregnancy.
We were waiting for the test results. Genetic. Possible infections. Anything that could explain the growth restriction. I went down rabbit holes with Google, trying to understand how devastating this could be. It was bad. Growth restriction, during those critical weeks of mid-pregnancy development... the damage had already been done.
I thought, "How can I possibly make a decision before 24 weeks? What if we don't have all of the information yet? What if I need more time? What if the answer isn't clear?"
At 21 weeks, Nelle made the decision for us. She spared us the agony of making a decision ourselves.
But I can't imagine not having a choice.
Iris died about six months later, at 16 weeks of pregnancy. We found out through genetic testing after she died that she had a chromosome abnormality. It may have contributed to her death; it was unclear. When I looked up this particular abnormality, the prognosis was bad. I told Ger, and he said, "I feel like my heart just stopped beating."
It felt like we dodged two impossible decisions. But decisions that belong to us, and would be made in consultation with our doctors. With no interference from the government.
My first pregnancy was ectopic. I didn't even know I was pregnant until I ended up in the ER with severe pain. Ectopic pregnancies are not possible to save. I took medication to end the pregnancy, and that was it. If that medication hadn't been available to me, I could have faced fallopian tube rupture, bleeding, or life-threatening complications.
Ectopic pregnancies have to be addressed immediately. I didn't hesitate. I did what my doctor told me to do and took the medication.
It's terrifying to me now that my living daughter, my rainbow baby, might not have access to reproductive medical care.
If things stay the way they are right now, I envision that I'll have to talk with her at some point about only living in certain states: those that guarantee her rights to reproductive care. Living in other states is dangerous.
Even a much-loved, much-wanted pregnancy can force parents into situations they cannot comprehend until they face them. I never want my daughter to receive terrible news and then on top of that, that her doctor can't help her.
Right now, in our state, her rights are protected. Even that could change. But I hope that when she's old enough to need access to reproductive care, those rights have been restored. We've seen women push back in Kansas and Ohio, turning out in droves to vote in favor of protecting abortion access in the state constitution.
I'm hopeful that this is just a blip because women have fought too hard to have our rights taken away.
I grew up Catholic. Abortion was firmly in the "unforgivable sin" category. I remember when I first started thinking about abortion differently, in college. That even if it wasn't something I would choose, I had no right to tell other people what to do.
No one talked about situations like ectopic pregnancies, or genetic abnormalities, or fatal conditions. I didn't consider that, at some point in my life, I'd be faced with decisions that would impact my pregnancy. Devastating things that happened not once, but three times.
I fight for my daughter. I talk about what reproductive freedom means with all of my children. We're not going back.
Anna Burgess Yang