![]() “This baby is different,” the technician said. There was a big black spot on Laurel’s brain. Yet her husband encouraged her to book a second level-two ultrasound, a “peace of mind ultrasound”.Įxpecting only reassurance, Kate knitted a pink sweater for Laurel while chatting freely with the technician who quickly grew silent. They would never reverse a diagnosis without being super sure about it,” the nurse replied. She asked the nurse how sure the specialist was. “My husband and I did not feel like everything was fine,” she says. Everything looks fine,” the specialist told the parents.īut Kate had a nagging worry. Photograph: Kayana Szymczak/The GuardianĪt 19 weeks, an ultrasound revealed a shadow of concern but the finding was reversed with full confidence at a level-two ultrasound. ![]() Kate holds her baby Laurel’s foot and hand prints that were made by nurses at the clinic. She was due in the summer of 2012, and both parents were elated. “It was a long road,” she says, but by age 29, she was finally expecting another girl, Laurel. But while pursuing her PhD in engineering, she suffered three miscarriages. Her first pregnancy went fine, and she had a healthy baby girl. She and her husband were going to have four kids, and she was going to be an engineering professor. I needed to know that I had a baby,” Kate Carson says.Īt 27, Kate had her life planned out. Her daughter was warm, but not as warm as she should have been. He gently passed her to her mother, Kate. The doctor entered carrying Laurel, a bundle of just five pounds wrapped in a pink-and blue striped cotton blanket. That warm June day, the recovery room was silent. Kate Carson, teacher, outside Boston, Massachusetts Here, three different women agreed to share their experiences to end misconceptions about late-term terminations, and to explain to politicians and the general public why they’re necessary in the first place. Meanwhile, Congress is considering a bill that would also ban abortion at 20 weeks nationwide – which is when ultrasounds can offer the first signs of anomalies in fetal anatomy. Among them, Republicans introduced the first-ever federal “heartbeat” bill earlier this year – which would ban abortions after a heartbeat is detected. Just this year, 400 abortion restrictions were introduced in 41 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. I’ve often heard women say that they chose to end such pregnancies because of unselfish reasons: they couldn’t bear the thought of putting their fetus through even more pain or suffering.” “Asking a woman to carry a fatally flawed pregnancy to term is, at the very least, heartbreaking. “Abortions that occur at this stage in pregnancy are often the result of tragic diagnoses and are exactly the scenarios wherein patients need their doctors, and not obstructive politicians,” says Dr Jennifer Conti, clinical assistant professor at Stanford University.
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