When I was 20 weeks pregnant, I and my husband learned during a routine ultrasound that our baby had not developed a major portion of her brain and never would. The condition, anencephaly , a type of neural tube defect that also stunts the growth of the skull, is terminal. If carried to term, our baby would be very unlikely to survive for more than a few hours .

One in 1,000 fetuses have this condition. We had no warning signs. No indications. No idea this was coming. This was a baby we had planned for. Just three weeks earlier we had told our 5-year-old daughter that she would soon have a baby sister. We returned home from the hospital that day and had to tell her that her sister was not coming any more. It was the first time she saw me sobbing, unable to speak.

We made the decision to terminate the pregnancy immediately. Then came the roadblocks.

I am a federal worker, and the Hyde Amendment, passed by Congress in 1976, barred my health insurance company from covering my abortion, just as it does for the millions of other women who are federal employees and for the millions of women who are federal Medicaid recipients . The amendment allows abortion coverage only if the pregnancy will endanger a woman’s life or is the result of rape or incest. Some states use their own funds to cover abortions that don’t fall within those bounds. Pennsylvania, where I live, is not one of them.

I’m lucky to be a federal employee in some respects. I benefited from regular prenatal care that was entirely covered by my insurer. I benefited all the way until I needed to have an abortion, when my health care coverage disappeared — at the time I needed it most.