An Abortion Story
Written by Katherine Ottaway MD
Abortion must remain legal. I am a Family Practice Physician and did rural family medicine for 31 years. Here is one reason why we must keep it legal.
My partner’s patient comes in bleeding heavily, past 12 weeks pregnant. She needs a transfusion but the bleeding stops.
She comes in a second time, bleeding more heavily. This time she needs twice as much blood after bleeding for one hour. She is glad the baby is still alive on ultrasound. I am frightened.
I call a high-risk pregnancy doctor and ask what we should do. They advise me to send her to them to end the pregnancy. “Otherwise as the pregnancy gets bigger, she has a very high risk of bleeding to death.”
I talk to her. She is furious and says, “You can transfuse blood when I bleed!”
“No,” I say, “You bleed too fast. You bled heavily in one hour. I cannot transfuse you fast enough.”
She throws me out of her room.
I wait and think and go back. “How does this pregnancy feel to YOU?” I ask. By then she had faced the information, however little she wanted to hear it.
“Terrible!” she says and starts crying.
“Then you have to listen to that! We want to keep you alive for your other two children!”
“I will do it.” The pregnancy is ended, a second trimester abortion.
This is terribly hard, but I think it is the right decision. And I see her a few years later. She now has a third child. She says that it was hard, but she thanks me. The pregnancy did not feel right to her either. The number one cause of death of women of childbearing age used to be childbearing. I don’t want to return to that time.
Text © Katherine Ottaway MD
Edge of Humanity Magazine’s
FREE Projects & Other Services
To Promote Works From Artists,
Photographers, Poets & Writers
PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK, SHORT STORIES & MUSIC Recommendations FREE Platform For Artists NO MIDDLEMAN ART GALLERY In The Mind Of An Artist Open Submissions for Writers & Poets Photo Curator PRESS RELEASE On Edge of Humanity Magazine Photography Articles
Edge of Humanity Magazine is an independent nondiscriminatory platform that has no religious, political, financial, or social affiliations.
We are committed to publishing the human condition, the raw diverse global entanglement, with total impartiality.
Support This Small Independent Magazine
Please
DONATE
Follow Edge of Humanity Magazine
Email Subscriptions
WordPress Bloggers
Follow Edge of Humanity Magazine on WordPress.com
Not on WordPress?
Don’t Forget to add
to your reader or bookmarks
Thank you!
2 Responses to “An Abortion Story”
Yes, sometimes, our bodies have a way, of, letting us know, that, we are, not, ready yet to, carry, and, if we go against that, then, things, usually, don’t, end well, for us, individually…
What a heartbreak and what a brave woman to make the right decision.