A very close friend of mine announced that she was pregnant. We were so excited to hear that the first of my friends was pregnant! A few months later she called me with devastating news: the fetus had kidneys that were not functioning which was causing fluid to back up and affect the heart too.

They spoke to fetal surgeons who told them surgery would be risky and not guaranteed to fix anything if done in utero. If she waited until after birth to have surgeries performed, the risk was very high that the fetus would not make it to delivery due to its condition. She did not want to lose the pregnancy she tried so hard for. She also did not want the baby to suffer any longer than it needed to.

Luckily, the hospital where she went had skilled family planning specialists—she opted for an induction of labor abortion; however, she had a terrible reaction to the induction medication and ended up in a near coma for three days while the family planning specialists performed an emergent D&E on her. She would have had to carry the pregnancy until the fetus died if abortion were restricted in her state.