More than a dozen Texas women in total have joined the Center for Reproductive Rights’ lawsuit against the state’s law, which prohibit abortions unless a mother’s life is at risk — an exception that is not clearly defined.
www.pbs.org
“Jessica Bernardo and her husband spent years trying to conceive, even consulting fertility doctors, before finally become pregnant with a daughter, Emma, last July.
Almost immediately, Bernardo was coughing so hard and often she would sometimes throw up. Fourteen weeks into the pregnancy, test results revealed her baby likely had Down Syndrome, so she consulted a specialist who gave her devastating news: Emma’s heart was underdeveloped and she had a rare, deadly disorder called fetal anasarca, which causes fluid to build up in the body.
“He handed me a tissue box,” recalled Bernardo, who lives in Frisco, Texas. “I thought maybe the worst thing he was going to tell us was that she’s going to have Down Syndrome. Instead, he said, ‘I can tell you right away…she wouldn’t make it.’”
The doctor warned her to watch out for high blood pressure and coughing, symptoms of Mirror syndrome, another rare condition where a mother “mirrors” the same problems the fetus is experiencing.
With Bernardo’s blood pressure numbers climbing, her OB-GYN conferred with the hospital’s ethics board to see if she could end the pregnancy but was advised Bernardo wasn’t sick enough. Bernardo spent $7,000 traveling to Seattle for an abortion a week later.”
“Samantha Casiano, a 29-year-old living in eastern Texas, found out halfway through her pregnancy last year that her daughter, Halo, had a rare diagnosis of anencephaly, where much of the skull and brain is missing. Her doctor told her she would have to continue with the pregnancy because of Texas law, even though her baby would not survive.”
carry on
