Life is about choices.
Shortly after my beloved grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it was clear that I had a choice: I could remain thousands of miles away, in Brooklyn, New York, where I have happily lived for eight years, or I could pack up my family of four and move to rural South Dakota to be closer to my extended family.
My husband and I decided to move. But on the day before we started looking for houses, I found out I was pregnant.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just choosing to move to a new state. I was choosing to move to a new state with a near-total abortion ban while carrying a high-risk “geriatric” pregnancy.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just choosing to move to a new state. I was choosing to move to a new state with a near-total abortion ban while carrying a high-risk “geriatric” pregnancy and a history of pregnancy-related complications.
Around the same time, the country was presented with its own surprise choice. After President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris dramatically changed the course of the upcoming election. The Democratic nominee for president injected hope and joy into an election cycle previously dominated by fear and despair. Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate pushed progressive optimism into overdrive.
Walz has defied the stereotypical caricatures of white, straight, male Midwestern politicians. From fighting to end period poverty in schools, to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and providing free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota students, Walz is a living reminder that the middle half of this country is not uniformly conservative or inherently regressive.
In 2023, in response to the Supreme Court defying decades of legal precedent and overturning Roe v. Wade, Walz signed a law enshrining abortion access into Minnesota statutes, ensuring that the state will continue to offer abortion care regardless of the courts system.
Now, at 22 weeks pregnant, it’s a law I am directly benefiting from.
Living just 30-ish minutes from the state’s border, I drive 45 minutes into Minnesota to receive my prenatal care at Pipestone County Medical Center. It was not easy to set up care in a neighboring state; I had to guarantee that my insurance would cover out-of-state costs, that my provider in New York state could send over medical records, and that the team in Pipestone, Minnesota, could take on another (out-of-state) patient.
After two weeks of calls, emails and yes, even faxes, appointments were made and I was assured by a nurse that I was in good hands, that I would be cared for, that if the worst-case scenario occurred my Minnesota team would be legally able to help.
In South Dakota, abortions are banned with very limited exceptions and providing an illegal abortion is a felony. While physicians are permitted to administer abortion care if the life of the pregnant person is in danger, like all abortion exceptions the language is vague and has left doctors, nurses and health care providers to navigate a treacherous gray area.
I’m all too aware of the risks. Studies have shown and countless stories have highlighted a horrifying post-Roe reality: pregnant people in need of lifesaving abortion or miscarriage care have been turned away, or have been forced to endure invasive, unnecessary C-sections in order to spare attending doctors the possibility of hefty fines and possible jail time.
One recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics found that Texas’ abortion ban is responsible for an increase in the state’s infant mortality rate.
At 37 years old, my pregnancy is automatically considered more dangerous. I also have experienced multiple miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy and the loss of a twin at nearly 20 weeks gestation that forced me to give birth to one baby who was alive alongside the remains of a fetus. Given this history, I did not want to even chance the possibility of becoming another statistic in yet another study that highlights the devastating impact of abortion bans.
So I will make the choice, over and over again during my pregnancy, to cross state lines and ensure comprehensive prenatal care that, if necessary, could legally include an abortion. I will choose to give birth in a state I do not call home, just in case I experience a labor complication that South Dakota state physicians might be too scared to help me survive.
But this choice is not offered to countless pregnant people in South Dakota, or in the 21 other states that ban or severely restrict a common medical procedure that an estimated 1 out of every 4 women (as well as trans and nonbinary people) undergo in their lifetime.
An estimated 25 million women live in a state that bans or severely restricts abortion care. One recent Associated Press analysis found that more than 100 pregnant people have been either turned away from or negligently treated at emergency rooms since 2022. An estimated 1 in 5 women are traveling an average of 86 miles to receive the abortion care they want and need.
Recently, two women living in Texas have filed federal complaints after they were denied abortion care to treat life-ending ectopic pregnancies and, as a result, nearly died. Fellow Texan Ryan Hamilton wrote down, in excruciating detail, the sequence of events after complications from an incomplete miscarriage — and medical staff reluctant to intervene — that nearly led to his wife’s death.
Walz’s so-called “abortion sanctuary state” gave me that choice, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing my physicians will never face federal prosecution for providing me with the care I may need.
Now, the nation has a similar choice.
As Republicans continue to attack abortion rights and champion a nationwide abortion ban, Harris and her running mate are providing the country with an alternative — one that trusts pregnant people to make their own decisions about their bodies, pregnancies and families; that empowers physicians to do their jobs and adhere to their Hippocratic oaths; that continues to ensure parenthood is not a punishment for having sex but one of life’s overwhelming, joyful, scary, wonderful decisions.
Life is about choices. I hope, come November, this country makes the right one.