If there's one thing I never expected to do at the age of 41, it's sitting in front of a laptop, deep sighing, I typed in the search engine the words: “where can I get an abortion?” incredibly difficult, as well as being forced to commit a crime.
My fears started this spring when I started feeling nauseous and tired. At first I chalked it up to working too hard – I'm a medical professional and my job is a constant stress – but as the days went by, I struggled to figure out what was wrong. Then I realized that I had not had my period for a long time. It's not unusual for me – since I had my youngest, they've been pretty irregular – but I took a pregnancy test to be sure. It was positive.
My first reaction was that I couldn't have another child. We already have two kids, ages 7 and 5, so the years of sleepless nights and diapers won't last long. Finally my career is going up again.
Besides, we can't afford it: before my youngest went to school, childcare cost us about $1,400 (£1,100) a month. It's the same as our mortgage. In order to have another child, I knew that my two wonderful children would suffer, and I could not do this to them.
There was only one problem: I live in Texas, where abortion is now illegal.
That's because exactly one year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which granted women in America the constitutional right to have an abortion.
This gave individual states the right to ban abortion—and last year 13 states have done so completely, while seven others have limited abortions to six weeks after conception. This means that about 1 in 3 American women like me suddenly find themselves in places where abortion is not available or severely restricted.
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Texas was the first state to implement a near total ban. There are seven million women of reproductive age here, but you can only get an abortion in case of a “medical emergency.” Even this loophole is so vague that some doctors are too scared to help terminally ill women terminate their pregnancies for fear of committing a crime.
I heard horror stories on the radio about women on the brink of death. Or the 10-year-old girl who had to travel to Indiana to have an abortion after being raped, for example, because it was illegal in her state. In Idaho, if you help a minor leave the state for an abortion, you can now go to jail for five years.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Amanda Zurawski, who almost died when she was denied an abortion despite the pregnancy being unbearable, is one of 13 women and two doctors who decided to sue the state of Texas in hopes of the rescue. relaxing the ban to give doctors more leeway in determining whether an abortion is necessary.
Competing rallies were held near Planned Parenthood of Missouri after U.S. Supreme Court decisions to strike down Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Photo: Robert Cohen/AP
This is a nightmare. And to be honest? When the law came into force, although I got angry and went out to protest against it, I did not think that this would greatly affect my life. I was in my early 40s with two kids. I thought everything was ready.
So when this pregnancy test turned out to be “positive”, I felt scared and completely alone, because the reality is that you don’t know who to turn to regarding this matter. Texas is a very religious state. Even friends and colleagues who are very liberal in most areas of their lives may not discuss this particular topic.
There are other reasons to remain silent. Texas has a so-called “headhunter” law. This means that if someone suspects you of having an abortion or helping someone else, they can report you and then sue you for up to $10,000 (£7,860).
If you trust your loved ones, they are involved in something extremely illegal. If it comes down to it, I don't want my family or friends to be responsible for me, including my husband. I knew that if the authorities found me and charged me, I needed him to be around and look after the children. Better keep it to yourself.
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Because of this, I knew I couldn't cross state lines to get the procedure, because if you had a miscarriage you wouldn't be able to drive, so I would need an escort. But I have heard on the radio that women have successfully ordered abortion drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, online.
I contacted some providers in states where abortions are legal and asked if they could send them to Texas, but they all said no and that the legality was too vague. I then found a company in India that said they could send them to me, but when I tried to pay through a third party website for international transactions it was flagged as a potential scam.
I got a call from the money service and started asking a lot of personal questions about why I want to send US dollars to India. This made me feel very uncomfortable so I ended the call and canceled the order.
Abortion rights advocate Eleanor Wells, 34, wipes her tears during a protest in 2022. Photo: Jae S. Hong/hotspot
At that moment, I realized that time was running out. I tried to figure it out and assumed that I was pregnant no more than the second month, but I could not know for sure. I kept thinking: “If things go further, there will be no way out.”
After a long secret search, I found a charity in the Netherlands that could send me the pills. There were a lot of positive reviews from women in the US who said they took medication from them, but I was still nervous. It is scary to order medicines on a foreign site. Do I trust these people? What if that's not really what I'm asking for? What if they send me cyanide? It may seem implausible, but abortion clinics have been bombed here.
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I sent an email and they responded very quickly with an online consultation and lots of clinical questions. I kept my messages to them very brief. I'm a medic, and if I get caught doing something like this, I could lose my license. It is best to have the least amount of evidence in writing.
After consulting and paying around $350 (£275), I was sent a shipping notice from India. All I could do was pray that the pills would arrive and that I would get to them first. I was worried all the time that my husband or kids might find the package on the rug by the door and open it without knowing what was inside.
They arrived exactly one week later, so far three weeks after I found that pregnant. I set up an email alert to let me know when the package was being delivered, so as soon as I saw it was being delivered, I left work telling them I had urgent family business and rushed home.
I got incredibly excited reading the instructions and went through them three or four times to make sure I was doing everything right. You take one tablet and then a second the next day. The worst happened within 24 hours; I had severe nausea, cramps and bleeding, but I could not get off work. My job is that you just need to take paracetamol and muscle.
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However, it is very hard to be hurt alone and there were days when I would just go to my room and cry because I was so sad about the situation and not being able to have another baby. But I was also very grateful that I got my body back and that I was tech-savvy enough to find someone who could safely help me. Not every woman can do it.
It's been a few weeks, but part of me still worries. There is written evidence in my email. The tablets were addressed to me. I don't know who is looking for what. In the future, someone might ask me why I bought a pregnancy test at the grocery store and what happened next?
I think about moving out of Texas every day – I have a daughter and I don't want her when either have to go through it. I hope she never has to think about it and the law changes again. As shocking as it all is, it hasn't returned to normal yet, and it still seems like it might be temporary. I can only hope that people will fight and the decision of the Supreme Court will be overturned.
As Claire Cohen said
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