Lectures from strangers
Four years after nearly dying, Kami gave birth to a healthy girl following an uncomplicated pregnancy. But her journey to having more children presented more challenges.
Two years after the birth of her child, she had another ectopic pregnancy. Her doctor sent her prescriptions for medication that would end this pregnancy, but a pharmacist refused to fill the prescription.
“Do you know these are very serious medications?” the pharmacist asked her. She did – she had taken them once before for another ectopic pregnancy. She was with her daughter, feeling devastated about losing yet another desired pregnancy. She simply wanted to get the medication and go home.
“‘So you’re trying to have a cheap abortion,’ he said, and 30 heads turned and looked at me. The whole pharmacy heard,” Kami said.
She told the pharmacist that she’d miscarried. She said he responded with: “So you have a dead baby in your body.”
Even after her doctor called to insist on filling the order, the man refused to fill it.
Kami left without the prescription, and her doctor performed a surgical dilation and curettage to remove the embryo from her fallopian tube for no fee.
Kami later tried again to have more children. She experienced another ruptured tube that she said nearly killed her.
“There was such a sense of pain knowing that I couldn’t have any more kids, but also the relief of knowing that I don’t have to go through this again,” Kami said. Now, however, with the Supreme Court having overturned Roe v. Wade, she has a new worry: “That my daughter will not have the same rights and access to health care that I did.”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.