I recently had a 27 year old patient, who I’ll call Jill. Jill suffered a stroke in June 2016 after having a pulmonary embolism, and was on multiple medications to manage the embolism and the complications that arose from it.

Jill was pregnant for the third time. Her doctors recommended that she have an abortion procedure due to her complicated medical history and the time required for her to heal after her stroke. For the last month, Jill hadn’t taken any of her medications because she had to choose between the cost of taking those life saving medications or saving money for the abortion, as she received her health care coverage through Medicaid, which does not provide coverage for abortions.

She is lucky she did not suffer another event during the time it took for her to have the abortion procedure, and I strongly recommended she restart all those medications as soon as possible.

If Medicaid covered abortion procedures, Jill wouldn’t have to choose. It’s frustrating that we’re forcing women to choose between taking life saving medications or a lifesaving procedure. The system is so broken.