A woman in Texas came near to death when her pregnancy became unviable. Because of the strict anti-abortion laws in place, doctors were not allowed to intervene until the baby miscarried on its own or the mother’s life was in danger.
Amanda Zurawski was 18 weeks pregnant when she noticed something was wrong while on a walk in her neighborhood in Austin, Texas. She told People magazine she noticed "what felt like water running down my leg." She went to her doctor to get checked out and was told a miscarriage was inevitable. Amanda was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix. Her cervix dilated too early because of this.
Amanda said she “crumbled” when she got the news. Her husband Jeff and she had undergone 18 months of fertility treatments to get pregnant. Little did she know it was only going to get worse. Her doctors also told her they were not allowed to remove the unviable fetus unless Amanda's life was at risk. She would have to miscarry on her own or get sick enough for medical intervention.
Amanda and Jeff were left grieving and in limbo, not knowing how long this process could take.
"It could be days, it could be weeks," Amanda noted. "And knowing that we just had to live with that, it was incapacitating. I was unable to function. I didn't work, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I was left wanting to either get so sick that I almost died or, praying for my baby's heart to stop beating — this baby that I had wanted and worked to have for 18 months.”
Three days later, Amanda developed sepsis, a potentially life-threatening infection. She delivered the fetus at the hospital.
“That was the scariest thing I've ever gone through in my life — seeing Amanda on what could have been her deathbed," Josh recalled.
Amanda wrote a first-person essay for The Meteor about her experience.
She writes: "It took three days at home until I became sick 'enough' that the ethics board at our hospital agreed we could begin medical treatment; three days until my life was considered at risk 'enough' for the inevitable premature delivery of my daughter to be performed; three days until the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals were allowed to do their jobs.”
To hear Amanda’s full story, watch the video.
