By Cat Poland
Better Off Said
While leaving the Kansas State Fair with my middle-school age son, we heard the protestor guy on the bullhorn accosting a passerby, “You like to kill babies? Oh, I’m crazy? Maybe I’m crazy for Christ!”
Sigh. I remember when I was once “zealous” like this too. I advised my son to ignore him, but I used the moment to tell him about my own experience with abortion, and how it helped my perspective do a 180. I grew up Catholic in the 80s and 90s, in a small Kansas town where dang near everyone was Catholic. That means I was vehemently pro life. Then again, I didn’t really have a choice. (Get it?)
From a very young age, I was exposed to images of dismembered limbs and tiny bloody bodies. How could anyone kill a baby?! We raised money for anti-abortion causes, talked about the sacred value of every human life, and were threatened with hellfire and damnation if we ever even thought about the possibility of abortion. My brother was arrested during the Summer of Mercy in 1991.
For reasons that are too long to name here, I stopped being Catholic by the time I went to college, but I didn’t stop being pro life. It seemed so simple to me: there are alternatives to abortion, so why have one?
And then I became pregnant.
From elated to deflated
In January 2008, my husband and I, we were expecting our first child. We were ecstatic. I bought a cake from Dillon’s with “We’re having a baby,” written on it, and celebrated with my mom and dad. Our joy quickly turned to fear when we returned home and I spotted dark brown blood in my underwear. It was the worst possible news: an ectopic pregnancy in my right fallopian tube. There was no salvaging this. And left untreated, I could die.
My husband and I wept in each other’s arms. We didn’t choose this. But I wanted to at least choose what happened next. I could either have immediate surgery to remove the tube entirely, diminishing my chances of getting pregnant in the future, or I could be injected with Methotrexate to “dissolve” the pregnancy, and potentially salvage my tube. I wanted the Methotrexate option. I wanted to have children. I wanted to have the best chance possible to get pregnant in the future. But I was denied this medical option … because of someone else’s religious beliefs.
Did you know? In states where total abortion bans have been implemented, twice as many women have died from ectopic pregnancies. Kansas didn’t have a total abortion ban in 2008, or now (thanks to the defeat of the 2022 constitutional amendment).
So why was I initially denied medical care? Because the first hospital I went to was Catholic.
Ignorance and incredulity
I have told this story many times. Some have said that it wasn’t Via Christi’s official policy to deny this treatment to patients, but that wasn’t the case for me. I was told I either had to have it surgically removed, or “wait it out.” I’m not certain why surgically removing my tube was a more “ethical” option vs. Methotrexate, but regardless, I had to find another option.
I finally got an infusion clinic at Wesley, but they mistakenly gave me a half dose, and the pregnancy continued to grow. I was at work one day, muddling through the emotional pain of carrying a pregnancy with no chance of survival, when I experienced the most severe physical pain of my life.
My tube had ruptured. I was bleeding internally. It was approximately 18 hours between that initial pain and when I was finally taken to surgery. It was a blur of agony, fear and morphine. I woke up in a post-surgery haze, with only one thing on my mind: did they save my tube?
But my heart sank when I heard the suffix “-ectomy.” My mom was a first-rate English teacher, and I knew that meant something had been removed from my body. The word is salpingectomy. I’d lost my tube.
Fortunately for me, I was able to get pregnant four more times, three of whom survived, and one that died in utero. But I’ll never forget the desperate feeling of realizing that someone else’s religious beliefs got to dictate what happened with my body.
Some have heard my story and want to reassure me that I didn’t have an abortion. Except I did. It’s even listed that way in my medical charts. We want to sugar-coat it and explain it away as if this situation is actually so different from many other sensitive and traumatic experiences. I was even told I could have “moved the pregnancy to my uterus.” (Insert sound of my palm slapping my forehead.)
Women are dying. And it doesn’t have to be this way. The “pro life” movement has a chokehold on compassion, dignity, and common sense. Let women live. Let women and their doctors choose.
Too often, we hear, “What if that baby had grown up to cure cancer.” But we completely ignore the face that the person carrying the pregnancy could very well cure cancer, too. But she has to survive first.
My son now understands the gravity of the situation, and why it’s important to keep abortion legal. “If you had died then, I wouldn’t be alive now.” That’s right, son. My life was spared.
Others have not been so lucky. He gets it. Why is it so hard for others to understand? I tried to sue for malpractice for what happened to me, but was told my situation wasn’t “bad enough” for a lawsuit. If I had died, it would have been a different story. And women have died. In fact, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Texas Medical Board, and medical providers are currently being sued by a family after they lost a loved one. Good! Imagine if it were another religion that got to decide if you lived or died? Banning abortion might sound viable in theory, but in practice, it is killing women. That doesn’t sound very “pro life” to me.
Cat Poland is a local writer. More of her work can be found at substack.com/@catpoland.