As a storyteller I often find myself asking: What's the worst-case scenario? It's thrilling to imagine what it takes for a character to climb out of her own personal depths, but without actually having to feel the shame and despair, or reap any real-world consequences. But what happens when you're living your own inescapable rock bottom—only to discover: it can, in fact, get worse?

As a recent survivor of a rare bone cancer, chondrosarcoma, I presumed I knew from worst-case scenarios. I spent the last four years chasing experimental treatments and brutal clinical trials in order to eliminate a deadly, inoperable cancer. I allowed chemotherapy into my veins and radiation through nearly every inch of my body. It worked. It was necessary. But not without repercussions. I wasn't the miracle TV cancer survivor, emerging unscathed with perfect skin, hair, and health after commercial break. My immune system was obliterated, my scalp was completely bald, my lungs were shredded, my right kidney and left eye stopped functioning altogether. And while some of that slowly returned, I still continue to receive monthly chemo, daily toxic oral medication, and frequent scans (x-rays, CTs―pick your literal poison) in order to keep cancer at bay.

Before I began any treatment, my oncologists asked if I wanted to preserve my fertility. I immediately said no. Adoption? Maybe. But I never felt the biological imperative to birth my own child. After I completed my first clinical trial, my team of brilliant, life-changing, genius doctors sat me down in a taupe-walled conference room to inform me that the cancer and subsequent chemotherapy and radiation treatments rendered me sterile. They assured me I could never, would never get pregnant.

They were wrong. Several months ago, I was in the "on" part of a years-long on-again-off-again relationship. I was in love (then). I was careful (always, because sterility didn't make me any less susceptible to STDs). I became pregnant anyway.

For nearly eight weeks, I didn't know. I didn't know as I had countless scans shot directly at my abdomen for my yearly check-up. I didn't have a clue as I took daily doses of oral chemotherapy agents classified under Category X. (As in: Do not take while pregnant because it causes significant birth defects, if not miscarriage.) I didn't know because my period was as on-and-off-again as the relationship that got me pregnant in the first place. Because I was careful. Because I was told it was impossible.

There wasn't any squealing or crying from all the improbable miracle joy–because it was anything but a miracle. I was suddenly living my worst-case scenario, after years of believing I already was. I was pregnant. But I couldn't be.

I stared blankly at the Genius Team as they quietly, painfully laid out my reality: With my decimated immune system and limited kidney function, my body wasn't strong enough to sustain nine straight months of compromise. I couldn't stop my monthly cancer treatments and daily medication, or they believed my tumors would return–with no guarantee I would survive the cancer (or treatments) yet again. And if I continued with the medication, there was a high likelihood the fetus wouldn't survive, or if it did, it would likely have severe intellectual and physical deficits. An interminable silence hung in the room, until I finally asked the Head Doctor Genius, point blank, what he'd tell his own wife if she were in the same position. "I can't tell you what to do here," he finally managed to admit. "I…just can't tell you what to do."

It was the first and only time in four years he'd said those words. At every other medical crossroads, Doctor Genius knew me well enough to leave me alone for a day with a pile of statistics and case studies. (It's how I made every tough decision about my medical care: one day, one pile, and two shots of whiskey.) Except this time they added, by law, a slick, carefully worded pamphlet about "options." After 12 excruciating days, I was still struggling―sometimes with the man I loved, mostly without―imagining what my options truly were.

From the moment I understood, as a young adult, what "choice" meant, I believed in my guts, bones, and heart in a woman's right to it. Under any circumstances. Now that the theoretical was my reality, I felt exactly the same. Despite the fact that too many old men, bible-thumping on the Congress floor, would insist I unequivocally choose my fetus's life over mine, I was certain of my right to my own body. My own life. And, yet, I still spent countless, bleak hours staring at my ceiling–wondering if it was possible for this scenario to somehow produce both a healthy mother and child.

Several days later, Doctor Genius left a voicemail on my phone, gently reminding me I was nearing my second trimester. "I'd like to hear from you…sooner than later," he said so cleanly and methodically I'm still convinced he read directly from a script. After three more sleepless nights, near delirious with misery and nausea, one thing was clear to me: In order to stay alive, I needed to end the pregnancy.

At the same time, I recognized worst-case scenarios can always be worse. In all my research and soul-searching, I never had to consider if I could afford my choices. I didn't have to beg a reluctant boyfriend or my financially strapped family for help–I was solvent enough to afford the appointments with experts, along with any medications or procedures they laid out as options (even if my insurance refused to pay outright, which they too often do). I never once wondered if I would legally be permitted to make whatever choice I wanted or needed. I lived in California, where the rights to my own body were unequivocally protected up until viability―no mandating waiting periods or limitations―both with and without proof that my health may be in danger. I never once feared for my safety as I slipped in and out of the private offices and closed doors of brilliant, capable, trained physicians who were willing to do whatever I decided was in my own best interest. I wasn't sneaking into clinics that had become targets, simply by exercising their own legal right to perform safe, legal, and necessary medical procedures. I didn't have to fear, worry, or wonder. (Except, perhaps, for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's threats that women seeking abortions be "punished.")

I became instantly, excruciatingly aware that my unfettered access to a safe, legal, necessary procedure was a matter of only two things: luck and money. And my privilege made me as nauseated as the around-the-clock morning sickness that took over my body. I began to imagine myself in my exact same circumstances, in any other state but mine.

If I lived in New York, I would be able to obtain an abortion up until 24 weeks. However, if my pregnancy was discovered after 24 weeks, or if cancer resurfaced, I would only be able to obtain an abortion if my life was endangered. Not just my health. My life. (And in my specific case, it would be left up to my physician to determine if my health was considered endangered at all. My scans and medical history all but proved my cancer would return if I stopped taking medication; however, as Genius Doctor pointed out, "The threat of cancer is just that. A threat. Not a promise.")

The risk of cancer recurring would matter very little if I lived in Oklahoma, were it not for a down-to-the-wire veto of a bill designed to make any form of abortion a felony. Of course, I may not have even considered abortion in the first place, if the bill to require anti-abortion lessons in all public high schools had been passed and I was subjected to skewed, punishing rhetoric in my most vulnerable, formative years. As the laws stand now, under 20 weeks, I would only be required to attend mandated counseling. If past 20 weeks, I would be supplied with additional information on fetal pain. If I were a minor, I would need both consent and a notice of permission from my parent.

In Indiana, after July 1, I would be forbidden to seek an abortion based on genetic anomaly, including the fetus having Down Syndrome or any other disability. (Planned Parenthood and the ACLU filed a lawsuit, results pending.) I would also be subjected to a unique form of cruelty. Whether I chose an abortion or suffered a miscarriage, at any point in my pregnancy—I would be required, by Indiana law, to bury or cremate my fetus.

The list of state restrictions and looming bills across the United States are a mile long. The mandatory ultrasounds. The waiting periods that would require multiple trips to the medical facility, running the gauntlet of protestors so daunting, volunteer escorts are needed to protect women from so-called-activists' aggression. The threats to medical professionals' licenses. The demands for financial disclosures of abortion-related procedures. The gag rules and increasingly manipulative information health care providers are required to give their patients. (Then again, compared to El Salvador, where women face imprisonment and death due to unwanted or unviable pregnancies, including the rising cases of Zika virus across Latin America—the United States seems like an abortion haven.)

It shouldn't be a matter of luck and circumstance to obtain safe, legal, necessary abortions, any more than it should be a matter of luck or finance that I am alive and successfully managing my cancer. Right now, I am alive because my privilege protects me. And as long as money or geography is what separates me from any other woman being stripped of her rights, it's unacceptable.

Yes, I had a complicated, life-threatening reason behind my decision. But I shouldn't need one. I shouldn't have to justify my choice based on PET scans or looming cancer threats. I shouldn't be asked "why" by anyone and cross my fingers they approve of my answers. I shouldn't need to prove a damn thing. I should—like every single woman in the world—be able to choose for myself. To answer to no one but myself. My worst-case scenario doesn't have to look like anyone else's in order to have access to medical care.

Unlike television, there were no eleventh-hour convenient plot twists. No miracle cures. No TV-network-exec-sanctioned falls down the stairs. My reality only changed because I chose to change it.

Once it's over, once I walk in the doctor's office, with its muted colors and subdued tones and walk out, no longer pregnant, I thank Doctor Genius. He wasn't medically qualified to perform the procedure, but he sat beside me the entire time. We walk out into the parking lot. He puts a hand on my shoulder, and we just stand there a few moments in silence before my cab picks me up and takes me home.

I throw on my "sick pajamas" and call my off-again boyfriend. Neither of us knows what to say. There's nothing left to discuss, nothing to consider. He tells me he's glad I'm alive. He knew he couldn't choose for me. He didn't want to ask anything of me. "I'm just…glad you're alive." He doesn't offer to come over and keep me company. He knows better than to ask how I'm feeling. Part of him already knows; the other part of him understands that he never will. We both flip on our favorite season of The West Wing from our respective couches, timed out perfectly, and watch for hours on the phone until I finally drift off to sleep.

Years of chemo didn't break me. Radiation didn't break me. The crippling pain and mounting insurance bills and tumors snaking up my spine and around my organs did not break me. This nearly did. But in my guts, bones, and heart, I do not regret my choice—only that every single woman in the world is not able to make the same one.

Elisabeth R. Finch is a television writer, playwright, and essayist. She currently writes on Grey's Anatomy. Past television credits include: True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.