In a previous incarnation, I was an x-ray tech. I worked part time at a small clinic with standard radiographic imagining equipment and we also did ultrasound. The ultrasound tech was amazing, a good friend and a phenomenal technician. I swear that girl had extra sensory connections somewhere in her brain and she could literally see 3-D on that wavy 2-D screen. She was also grace under pressure.
One afternoon, she was checking a pregnant woman complaining of abdominal pain. The tech scanned the uterus and lo and behold, there was no fetus. On a hunch, the tech checked the fallopian tube and bingo, there it was, an ectopic pregnancy. And it was bursting, as she scanned. This amazing tech managed to call for an ambulance, call the pregnant woman’s OB/GYN and call the hospital to alert them of the emergency, while still scanning the pregnant woman. As she continued scanning, she very calmly explained to the panic stricken mother what was happening, keeping her focused, alert and under control. By the time the ambulance arrived, the mother was going into shock from blood loss, but she was awake. The mother survived this ordeal without permanent damage to her reproductive organs and she went on to have two healthy children. My friend’s quick action probably saved the mother’s life and I believe her scanning films of an ectopic burst are still being used at teaching hospitals. But this is not the mercy abortion I’m writing about. No, that was something entirely different. Our small clinic was in a small town. Most work was service work, many folks barely made minimum wage, and health benefits were marginal. My best friend was one of those with marginal benefits. She had prenatal care, but her insurance would not pay for an ultrasound. So I asked the ultrasound tech if she would be willing to do a "teaching procedure" for my friend. Essentially, this was an afterhours scan she would do on patients to get "teaching films." No charge or for that matter, authorization. What can I say, we were young and I wanted to give my best friend a picture of her baby. She had two children already, happy and healthy, but she didn’t have an ultrasound picture of either of them. Insurance wouldn’t pay and their family was barely getting by. So on the big day, we waited until everyone had gone home and then my friend came in for her scan. The ultrasound tech was more than happy to do this for us, and she started the procedure like always, showing the heart beat, the position of the legs and even showing the little guy’s little guyhood. Then the baby turned and the head started showing on the screen. This normally calm tech suddenly turned white as a sheet, I had never seen her like that. She moved the ultrasound wand back to the baby’s heart and motioned me to follow her out of the room on a pretext that we needed more gel. I followed her out of the room and the tech looked crestfallen. The baby was anencephalic, meaning that there was no upper skull. No cerebellum, no cerebrum, the spinal cord stopped at the brainstem. This baby was 25 weeks.
There is a happy ending to this story. My best friend was able to get a late term abortion two days later. She and her husband made this painful decision together. She was able to say goodbye her baby, to hold him, to bury him and mourn him. Within three months she was pregnant again and her beautiful son will graduate from high school this month. If she had been forced to carry her anencephalic baby to term, this wonderful young man would not be here.
I would fiercely hope that no one ever experience the ordeal of losing a child, but that’s unrealistic. There are medical conditions that are beyond any control and all women should have access to any and all tools and procedures available. It is unacceptable that women are forced to deal with antiabortion terrorists while also undergoing the trauma of pregnancy gone awry. Would the woman who had an ectopic pregnancy be considered a murderer? Is my best friend a murderer? Who dares to make that judgment?