- I was pretty sure about my husband right off the bat.
When I met him, I loved how he talked
about the things that he loved so much.
He would have me come over to his apartment
and we'd watch Soul Train YouTube clips
until late in the evening and he would look at me
with these adoring eyes and say,
"It's the happiest place on Earth."
And I was like, "It really is."
It took me no time
to know I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him
and it took pretty much no time
to realize I wanted to have a child with him.
And the happily ever after has been easy.
We're still as in love today as we've ever been,
but the child part has not been so easy.
It was after four years of trying,
two rounds of in vitro,
three frozen transfers from those in vitros
and a miscarriage
that we finally got pregnant with our daughter, Grace Pearl.
And we were just ecstatic.
The pregnancy went like a breeze.
And before we knew it,
we were at the anatomy scan,
which happens a little over halfway through the pregnancy.
And I could not wait.
I wanted that profile shot.
You know, you get the little like side profile
that everybody thinks about with an ultrasound.
And Jim wanted to see it too
so he came to the appointment with me
and we were having a nice time
and we were just chattering
about where we were going to get lunch
and it took me a little bit to notice
that the ultrasound technician, Nicole,
was not saying a lot.
She was kind of making concerned noises and she goes,
"There's not a lot of amniotic fluid.
I want you to roll on your side
and I'm going to go talk to the doctor."
So I do that
hoping that it'll prompt Grace to move to a better position.
And she comes back and tries to scan again and no change.
Grace has not moved.
And she says, "There's no amniotic fluid
and I'm sorry, I know that's not what you want to hear."
And I'm like, it's not?
Okay, all right.
And so she leads us down the hallway
to go talk to the doctor and I Google,
Google, "Second trimester, no amniotic fluid"
and what stares me back in the face is, "80 to 90% fatal."
And I'm like shit.
It does not improve when we get into the doctor's office.
There is a waiting room in the doctor's office
that is full of newborn pictures
that my doctor has just delivered,
most of them featuring her
and they're all smiling
and she comes in not smiling
and introduces herself to Jim, my husband, as Jen
and I'm like shit.
Not Dr. Meyer, Jen, that's not a good sign.
She explains the following,
our daughter's kidneys are huge,
they're full of fluid-filled cysts.
Basically, they're not working.
And the way that babies work when they're in the womb
is amniotic fluid travels through the kidneys
and is urinated out,
goes through, it is swallowed by them and it cycles.
And without that cycling, their lungs will never develop.
They can't breathe.
She explains that the prognosis is not good.
And we burst into tears.
To confirm this,
she has scheduled an emergency second ultrasound
an hour later also in this hospital
and for now, she lets us leave out a side door
so we don't have to go through the waiting room
full of expectant mothers with their full bellies
for all of our sakes.
I walk past a half eaten birthday cake on the way out.
We get outside and it is an unusually warm November day
and people are milling everywhere
and I cannot believe the Earth has not stopped
taking their lives with it,
just stopped in place.
And I can't even stop.
My parents knew that this ultrasound was happening
right then
and I can't not call them and tell them what's happened.
So I call and my mom answers within a second and she's like,
"How was it?"
And I'm like, "Not good."
And she drops the phone.
I can hear her sobbing.
My dad picks it up a few seconds later
and asks what happened.
And I do my best to tell him
while Jim's rubbing my back
and silently crying next to me
and my dad asks if he can be there with us
for the second ultrasound and we agree.
And that's where we meet him in the waiting room
for the second ultrasound.
He gives us each huge hugs
and makes jokes about the reading material
and I'm so grateful he's there, dad jokes and all.
And soon we're taken back for the second ultrasound
and it's about two hours
of detailed pictures of our daughter.
She shows us the kidneys and the little black dots on them,
which are the fluid-filled cysts
and she shows us that there's no black background,
which is what amniotic fluid is.
So there is not going to be that profile picture.
The doctor comes in and introduces herself as Dr. Grey
and my dad goes, "Like "Grey's Anatomy"."
And I'm like, "I don't think he's ever seen that show."
I loved that he was being humorous in that moment
and she asks what we know.
So we explain what we've heard so far and she said,
"That's right.
There are two outcomes for your daughter.
She'll either be stillborn
having been crushed to death by your body
because there's no amniotic fluid
or she will be born and the wheels will come off."
I remember that phrasing,
the wheels will come off.
"Without working lungs,
she'll never survive and she'll die
within minutes hopefully in my arms."
My dad thought to ask,
"What are the odds for a baby like this?"
And she looked at him and said, "None."
And she looks at me and says,
"Your baby would be the first if she made it."
She then starts to explain the laws around abortion
in the state of Missouri where I live.
She says that you have to first sign consents,
which aren't always easy to schedule
because only certain people
can allow you to sign them with them.
Then you have to wait 72 hours
I guess to consider what you're doing.
You also can't have an abortion after 21 weeks, six days.
I'm 20 weeks and six days when this happens
and there's an upcoming weekend
and the Thanksgiving holiday
so we have no time to think about it.
We have to decide almost immediately
if we want to be able to do this, if we choose to, in time.
She leaves the room to give us a moment
and we all just burst into tears,
we're all hugging one another and just inconsolable.
And I think about it and I'm just like,
what choice do we have?
She's going to die 100%.
And if we don't terminate this pregnancy,
she will suffer 100%.
And I look at Jim and I'm like,
"We have to terminate, right?"
And he's like, "Of course we do."
Even my dad who was raised Catholic
agrees it would be cruel to do anything else.
The doctor comes back in
and we tell her we've made our decision.
And she says, "I didn't want to sway you,
but your risk would go up seven times
if you didn't do this now."
And that's just the risk of being pregnant.
She explains that they will have somebody call us
as soon as possible
to get the signed consents scheduled
because we're so short on time
and we're lucky to be able to get in the very next day.
Jim and I go to a facility
where a doctor in scrubs meets us
and takes us back to a conference room
and there are papers laid out
Before I can even look at them, she pauses us and she says,
"These are state mandated forms.
They're not medical.
They contain judgemental language
that is designed to make you feel bad.
It is not how we feel about you."
I look down and I'm asked to sign saying
that I have been offered to hear my daughter's heartbeat.
I listened to my daughter's heartbeat
on a home doppler every other day.
I have a recording on my phone.
We're asked if we had been offered
to hear or to see an ultrasound.
I'd had three hours of ultrasounds just the day before.
And I also had asked for extra ultrasounds
because I wanted to see her any time I could.
Then I open a packet
and on the very first page in bold indented letters,
it says, "Human life starts at conception.
You are ending a separate, unique human life."
And my grief was interrupted by outrage.
Nowhere in this documentation
was how much Grace would suffer.
None of it talked about the increased risks to my health.
It was all just biased on one side.
I wanted to light them on fire, but I signed them.
I had to.
And that started the 72 hour clock.
That was the longest time in my life.
It was a slow marching through time
where my friends seamlessly cleared their calendars
to invite me over
to do jigsaw puzzles and drink tea with them.
My parents came over
and they removed every stitch of baby clothing
and items out of our home.
I took pregnancy approved sleeping pills.
I hugged Jim harder than I thought possible
and hoped that we could just meld into one person.
I cried and cried and cried.
And the night before the termination,
I asked Jim how he wanted to say goodbye to Grace.
Well, I thought about this.
I thought about how sure I was about my decision.
I knew other people
might make a different choice than I did.
And there was a part of me
that wanted to give birth to her and hold her.
But I couldn't imagine
doing anything but what we were doing
because it felt cruel to do anything different.
It was so definitive
and I never thought I would have an abortion,
but I've never needed to think about it.
Jim said he wanted to have a dance party for her,
our little Soul Train.
And he made a playlist
of songs he'd always wanted her to hear
and always wanted to teach her about.
And so in our pajamas,
late at night in our living room lit by candles,
we danced with Grace.
We played Riot Grrrl music and some Rolling Stones
and laughed at "Let's Spend the Night Together"
because we'd always thought
it would have a little different meaning with a newborn.
And when Mick Jagger sang, "Baby",
I padded my little baby bump and we sang at it.
And we slow danced to "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay",
which Jim has always said
is a perfect song just the way that it is.
We had to be at the hospital
at five in the morning the next day
and in the operating room
as the pre-anesthesia cocktail hit me,
I looked at my doctor in the corner and I was like,
"I need you to know that I love my daughter.
I'm doing this because I love my daughter."
The nurse rubbed my arms
and I was gently turned and laid back
on the operating table and they put my headphones in.
They told me I wouldn't be asleep.
And so we played Grace's playlist.
And that's how we said goodbye to her.
I'm pregnant again.
(audience applauding)
It's a girl again.
I'm so excited.
(audience applauding)
I can't wait to see what she's like
and to teach her things.
I can't wait to hold her hands while she's learning to walk
and to braid her hair.
I'm going to teach her about one of my favorite songs,
"Harvest Moon."
I really want her to grow up in a world where she's valued,
where her humanity and dignity
and her ability to make the best decisions for herself
are respected.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)