In December 2023, I was 39 years old and thrilled to be 20 weeks pregnant.
On the Friday before Christmas, I was at my routine 20-week anatomy scan when I went into preterm labor. The scan clearly showed that my cervix had opened, and my baby’s foot was protruding. At 20 weeks, my baby was not yet viable and would not survive.
Under normal circumstances, doctors would have administered medication to help me deliver the nonviable fetus. This would have been a short hospitalization with a low-cost and low-risk of complication.
But because of the state's current abortion law, these were not normal circumstances. Arizona’s harsh and heartless abortion ban made the best course of treatment illegal. I would have to get much sicker before my doctors could help me.
I was told that I had to stay in the hospital and wait until his heart stopped or I developed a serious infection, regardless of whether that process took days or weeks. My water had broken, so the risk of infection or sepsis was high.
I had to get sicker to qualify for medical care
While my husband and I waited for our baby to die and for me to become critically ill, we scheduled a D&C in Nevada for the following week, just in case. I laid there in the hospital, imagining the drive or flight out of state in the midst of preterm labor, terrified that I would deliver him en route while infection spread through my body.
My life and future fertility were put at risk by a barbaric state law.
Considering this was a deeply wanted pregnancy that my husband and I were devastated to lose, it feels ironic to say we were lucky when our baby’s heart stopped on Christmas Eve 2023 — only then were the doctors legally allowed to administer the health care I desperately needed.
Once I was allowed treatment, I delivered him within hours feeling a combination of relief, sadness, fear and anger.
Doctors and nurses were skilled — but handcuffed
Because I’d been forced to wait so long, the placenta had clotted to my uterine lining and my blood pressure plummeted. I had to have emergency surgery the next day. The procedure took three times longer than it normally would have had I been allowed to receive timely care. It was traumatic, frightening and painful.
I still think about my husband who had to sit alone, waiting for triple the amount of time he was told to expect, his mind racing over every worst case scenario for why I wasn’t coming out of what should have been a simple surgery.
The doctors and nurses were skilled, kind — and helpless.
We could see how horrified they were that they couldn’t give me the care I needed or follow best practices according to their professional judgment and ethics.
Imagine doctors being forced by politicians and judges to provide inadequate care that exacerbates the suffering of their patient. Their anguished faces still haunt me as does the knowledge that this happens every day across Arizona because of our current abortion ban.
Abortion law sets cruel, unnecessary hurdles
It was entirely unnecessary. Had Arizona politicians not decided that they know better than doctors, this trauma would have been preventable.
It was terrifying to know that my dying fetus had more rights than I did, and that I might get seriously ill, suffer future infertility, or even die because of the barbaric abortion ban.
My husband and I still want a baby and are now trying again.
Solution is to vote 'yes' on Proposition 139
That said, I am still recovering from this horrific experience. I was physically and emotionally bruised and desperately needed the trauma therapy I sought after all of this.
To add insult to injury, the medical expenses from this horror totaled more than $50,000. The loss of my baby was inevitable, but the lengthy hospital stay, emergency surgery and the trauma were not.
Arizona’s current abortion law inflicted this unnecessary experience on me, and unless we pass Proposition 139 to enshrine a right to abortion in our Constitution, it will be experienced over and over again by countless other pregnant women.
I deserved better. The women of Arizona deserve better. That’s why I am voting yes on Proposition 139 and I ask you to vote yes as well.
Ashley Ortiz works in health care and lives in Mesa with her husband and their dog. They hope to expand their family someday soon. She writes in support of the Yes on Prop. 139 campaign. On X, formerly Twitter: @azforaccess .
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Opinion: I lost my pregnancy at 20 weeks. Arizona's draconian abortion law made it worse.
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