A woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks has bravely chosen to share her story on the internet. Jezebel author Jia Tolentino interviewed a woman named Elizabeth*, who had a complicated second pregnancy after previously experiencing a miscarriage. She and her husband did not find out until she was more than 30 weeks pregnant that their planned pregnancy could not possibly end in a good outcome. They were told that, if Elizabeth gave birth, the baby would not be able to breathe and would likely experience a short, painful life.

"This baby was unviable, basically," Elizabeth told Tolentino. "That’s what they say. They say that the baby is 'incompatible with life.'"

They made the decision to end their child's suffering before it could begin.

"To be clear, if the doctors thought there was any way he might make it, I would have taken that chance," she said. "I truly would have put myself through anything. What I came to accept was the fact that I would never get to be this little guy’s mother—that if we came to term, he would likely live a very short time until he choked and died, if he even made it that far. This was a no-go for me. I couldn’t put him through that suffering when we had the option to minimize his pain as much as possible."

Abortion is legal in Elizabeth's home state, New York, up to 24 weeks. Because she was so far along, she and her husband were required to travel to Colorado to be treated by Warren Hern M.D., one of the four doctors in the United States who will openly carry out late-term abortions. She and her physicians worked together to determine a plan: She flew to Colorado, where Hern administered a drug to stop the fetus’s heart. Then she returned to New York for the birth.

Elizabeth told Tolentino that if she had undergone the entire procedure at Hern's clinic, including delivery, it would have cost her $25,000 in cash. The injection alone cost $10,000, and she also had to pay for airfare and hotel rooms for herself and her husband. She is attempting to get her insurance plan to cover some of her medical bill, but she expects that process to take some time. The financial barriers the couple had to overcome in order to access this procedure outlines just how difficult it would be for a less privileged person to be able to access this care, reminding us yet again that strict abortion laws disproportionately affect poorer women.

The procedure at the clinic took around six hours, and then the couple returned to New York, where Elizabeth was induced. Two epidurals failed, and a physician had to physically pull the baby out of her body. She was in labor for over 24 hours before her son was delivered, and had to undergo a D&C to remove the placenta afterwards.

Tolentino's interview with Elizabeth is an absolutely harrowing, heartbreaking story, and an important insight into why some women choose late-term abortion as the best choice for their families. Planned Parenthood reports that almost 99 percent of abortions occur before 20 weeks, and proponents of late-term abortion access argue that the women who choose these procedures are almost always doing so in order to spare their unborn children from pain and suffering. And the stories of women who have gone through this follow that same narrative.

Read the full, devastating interview here.

*Not her real name.

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