Three years ago, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority enabled states to severely restrict abortion or ban it outright. Since then, 17 states have enacted such limits; infant and maternal mortality have risen in many of them. But the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade extends far beyond medical catastrophes. It also appears in the quieter struggles—a myriad of small, compounding barriers that stand between individuals and their access to health care. Here are some of the stories of people who have stepped up to do what they can to provide care, and some of the women who found themselves trapped in a system increasingly difficult to navigate.
We had been trying to get pregnant, and in early 2023, we found out we were expecting a baby girl and decided on the name Cielle. (We already had a 1-year-old daughter named Camille.) At 20 weeks, we found out I had low levels of amniotic fluid. In the two weeks before we could get into the specialist’s office, I looked up ways to boost amniotic fluid and stuff and went all in on nutrition, rest, and hydration. I was willing to try anything.
At the follow-up ultrasound, I could see the baby had a strong heartbeat and was moving. She hadn’t been moving much at the previous appointment, so I thought the doctor was about to tell us really good news. Instead, the doctor told me that I went from having low amniotic fluid to having absolutely none. That is when he delivered the worst-case scenario: She was not going to make it, but I would have to carry her until she passed because of our state laws. He told me that intervening would be considered an abortion and that he could face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine for ending my nonviable pregnancy.
He didn’t mention going out of state as an option. At the time, I didn’t know that could be a possibility, because I was so scared of us getting in trouble. So, I carried her until she passed away five weeks later. I went in for an appointment with my OB-GYN every Tuesday to see if she was alive. Eventually, I went in for my routine check-up, and her heartbeat was gone.
We lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, at the time—a small community with small hospitals. My OB-GYN told me that he and his colleagues didn’t feel comfortable with me having my stillbirth there since they didn’t have enough staff or a large enough blood supply to accommodate me if something went wrong. I had to drive three hours to Little Rock, to have Cielle—away from family, away from friends. My placenta was moving down to cover my cervix, a life-threatening complication, which is why everything was happening really fast.
On the three-hour drive to Little Rock, I was anxious. I have never been super religious, and I struggled even more with my faith when we lost Cielle. It didn’t help that we got a lot of hateful feedback from Christian people pushing their religion on our experience. I stepped away from even believing that there was a God, but I was listening to worship music the whole way there out of fear and desperation because I thought that I might not make it back home. When Cielle was born, she came out looking so human—she had hair, she had everything. But she was already decomposing. I just didn’t want to see her that way.
We had been told a funeral home was going to take Cielle back to Forth Smith. But the day I was supposed to go home, they told us it would be $1,000 to transport her body. We weren’t expecting that expense. We called other funeral homes, and one of them suggested that we bring her home ourselves. It didn’t cost anything, and the hospital provided us with dry ice.
I am glad I had the extra time with her on my lap on the car ride home, but it was still harrowing. I do not feel like I had an option or choice in anything. It was messy and chaotic and horrible, and I don’t want anyone else to have to go through that.
You have to wonder, are anti-abortion people really pro-life? Because I guess my life didn’t matter when my placenta started to move down and cover my cervix and I risked hemorrhaging. At what point when I’m dying or at risk of dying do you intervene?
—Theresa Lee, formerly of Fort Smith, Arkansas
