Under the Cover of Night: Abortion Across Borders

Jessica and Robert* had a three-year-old son and were excited about their second child, a daughter. When Jessica was 21 weeks pregnant, the routine ultrasound was normal. At 26 weeks, she was in a minor car accident and her obstetrician referred her for a specialized ultrasound, concerned about the baby's heart. This was how Jessica and Robert discovered that their daughter had a serious heart defect. After meeting with a perinatologist, a genetics counselor and a pediatric cardiologist, they realized the prognosis was dire. After birth, their daughter would need urgent open-heart surgery, and would need two more surgeries in her first year of life. If she survived long enough, her only real chance would be a heart transplant. They cried, they raged, and then they turned to the Internet. They felt the only way they could protect their daughter from a lifetime of suffering was to terminate the pregnancy. When they arrived at our clinic in New Mexico, they looked beaten down, fragile. "I feel like we snuck across state borders under the cover of night," Jessica told us, "but what choice did we have?"