April | Janet | Mariana | Saieeda

 

Janet

My husband and I are ranchers. I was 45 years old when this happened. We have five children, and my parents live on our ranch also. We work hard, but since the multinational companies have taken over so much agriculture, it's hard to make a living wage. It helps to get Medicaid. I've had a rough year; I'd been feeling ill for a long time, stopped getting my period and gained a lot of weight. After many trips to the doctor - we are 45 minutes from town - I was diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Last fall, my husband and I were repairing our roof when I fell 16 feet off a ladder. I felt a "goosh" of water, and seemed like the same feeling as when my water broke when I'd had my kids. I made an appointment to see my doctor, and a week later he said I was 17 weeks pregnant. The ultrasound showed that there was no amniotic fluid left in the sac, but that the fetus' heart was beating. The doctor said that it wouldn't survive, and that my medication for Lyme disease was known to cause birth defects. Because he'd delivered my kids, I trusted him and asked him to do an abortion. He said that even though he knows how and is pro-choice, he couldn't, because his hospital won't allow them. He wished me luck, and warned me to get to the hospital fast if I started to hemorrhage, as I did with my last three pregnancies. The last one was so bad I almost died. The hospital is an hour and forty minutes from our house.

Wyoming Medicaid doesn't pay for abortions, so I tried to get the money together. By that time I was 19 weeks. I raised half the money, and a local abortion Fund gave me the rest and convinced a doctor, in a place three and a half hours from our home, to do it past his usual limit. But the night before, I started to bleed and passed out. My husband and kids were out in the fields calving. My father found me and rushed me to the hospital. I only know the rest from what my doctor and others told me. At the hospital, they gave me transfusions but they refused to empty my uterus, which was the only thing that would stop the hemorrhaging. The hospital administration wanted to air lift me to Salt Lake City, where they can treat severely premature babies, even though mine would never survive at only 19 weeks. My doctor finally convinced them to give me pitocin to induce labor. Five hours later, I came to but I was still bleeding full out. My doctor wanted to do a C-section but I refused; finally I delivered the fetus. It had died and it was very malformed. It took me months to recuperate at home. I am angry at what I had to go through. At every step, the life of the fetus was more important than my own life.

I'm angry that my own doctor wouldn't do the abortion. Why should abortion be separate from any other medical procedure? I'm angry that the hospital wouldn't let me have an abortion, even with my risks and medical condition! I'm angry that even when I'd lost every drop of my own blood, they thought the fetus' life was more important than mine, even though they all knew it would die eventually.

I'm angry and I'm lucky to be alive.