‘The worst nightmare.’ Another Ky woman faces reality of state abortion laws. | Opinion
In January, Heather Neace Maberry was excited to be pregnant for the fourth time.
Another little girl, to be named Willow, would join her three older sisters at the family home in Stanton, where Maberry lives with her husband, Nicholas, and works as a substitute teacher while she finishes her bachelors degree at Morehead State.
From the beginning, this pregnancy was difficult; Maberry was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, which causes severe and constant vomiting during pregnancy. She was hospitalized for a week in Clark County.
Then at 20 weeks, she went in for an ultrasound. The technician left the room and came back with the doctor. They told them the baby had anencephaly, which means she was missing parts of her skull and brain.
Last Wednesday, they went to the University of Kentucky medical center, where doctors confirmed the diagnosis.
“We were devastated,” Maberry said. “She is not technically alive, the only thing that has made her look alive is that she still has a spinal cord and when anything touches that spinal cord, she has an involuntary movement, which makes it feel like she’s alive.”
Ordinarily, the treatment would be to induce the fetus, which would probably be still-born or die soon after birth. But the UK doctors told her that under Kentucky’s draconian new abortion laws, that would be considered abortion. Her only choice was to travel out of state for an abortion or an induction.
“I’m living the worst nightmare a mother could imagine,” Maberry said, starting to cry. “I’m being forced to carry my child who will never breathe to full term or I have to have an abortion that I don’t believe in or want to do.”
Although she used to consider herself anti-abortion, Maberry could not bear the thought of carrying a dead baby to term; she has high blood pressure and is suffering anxiety attacks from her current stress. She reached out to the National Abortion Hotline, which helps women connect with providers and funding. She also started a GoFundMe page for financial help, as she has not been able to work. Her husband is a machine operator.
They finally decided to go to Chicago this Sunday for an abortion. It’s bad enough to lose a baby, but all Maberry wanted was an induction where she could kiss her baby once, then bury her remains nearby.
It’s a devastating decision for a mom of three, but sadly, hardly unique. As this paper and many others have documented, hundreds of women in states like Kentucky are facing these terrible decisions right now. Many have been told they will have to be septic before a doctor can take action. Kentucky’s law has vague language about allowing a termination if the life of the mother is in danger, but right now, Maberry’s is not. Only her sanity.
“They (legislators) do not know how it feels to carry a child, to have someone tell you the most devastating news of your life, and then say I can’t even hold her,” she said. “They have stolen that from me. I’m being forced to do something I don’t believe in.”
Sadly, the first reaction of Kentucky’s GOP supermajority will probably be try to ban interstate travel for abortion, which is another bizarre manifestation of a party that used to trumpet individual rights. After Kentucky voters defeated a constitutional abortion ban, they could have made changes to the current abortion law in this past session, including adding exceptions for rape and incest, and creating better, more defined language around nonviable pregnancies and the danger to a mother’s life.
Instead, Heather Maberry is stuck in an amorphous hellscape of laws that force parents to make agonizing decisions. She is not the first Kentucky woman to face this nightmare and she won’t be the last. She will be one of many victims of a misguided, inhumane, cruel policy that now tortures women every day. We must tell these stories over and over again until our lawmakers are ready to do the right thing.
