Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment in an occasional States Newsroom series called “When and Where: Abortion Access in America,” which profiles individuals who have needed abortion assistance in the USA before and after Dobbs. The first episode can be found Herethe second installment is Herethe third is Hereand the fourth is Here.
Anne Angus has been ready to expand her family for years.
She got pregnant on her first try and was lucky to avoid the morning sickness and extreme fatigue that often accompanies the first trimester of pregnancy. She quit her job because she was looking forward to becoming a full-time mother.
“It was so exciting, I was so ready,” said Angus, who lives in Montana.
By the time she was almost halfway through, she had already bought a few things on Facebook Marketplace, including a crib, a few toys, a bouncer—and the teddy bear onesie she clutches when she talks about her doomed pregnancy.
At her routine organ ultrasound at 19 weeks, Angus’ doctor said there was something wrong with her abdomen. But that could mean anything, with varying degrees of severity, according to her doctor, and they wouldn’t know more until more tests were completed. And those tests would have to be done by a team of specialists nearly 700 miles away at a children’s hospital in Denver, Colorado. Her appointment was four weeks after the organ ultrasound.
At the end of a series of tests, she met with a team of doctors at Children’s Hospital to discuss the diagnosis and next steps. It was Eagle-Barrett syndrome, a occasional genetic defect that can result in partial or complete absence of abdominal muscles, malformations of the urinary tract and abnormalities of the testicles.
“The little glands that run from the kidney to the bladder – his were three times the size of an adult’s,” Angus said. “You shouldn’t even be able to see them on an ultrasound, let alone see them very clearly.”
With a 50-50 chance of her future pregnancies carrying the same mutation, she opted for in vitro fertilization, which is a safer way to get pregnant and allows embryos to be tested before they are implanted in the uterus. But like abortion, access to IVF treatment is becoming another politically contentious issue at the state and federal level, and Angus fears her remaining option to have a child is also at risk.
After the Dobbs decision, the clinic was overrun by patients
Before arriving in Denver, Angus told her husband that she did not want an abortion despite the sedate diagnosis. He was understanding and supported any decision she wanted to make, she said.
But after determining the fetus’ condition, doctors in Denver began talking about dialysis, kidney transplants and various other treatments that would be needed after birth.
“It all sounded to me like they were experimenting on my baby, asking, ‘How long can we keep him alive?'” Angus said. “That didn’t seem loving or compassionate to me.”
While talking to her husband, Angus said, they talked about a family member who was terminally ill.
“It was devastating for the family to see this person’s pain grow as he slowly fell apart over the years,” she said. “We didn’t want that for our son.”
At the time, they made the decision to let him go without medical intervention, believing he could slowly pass away in a neonatal intensive care unit, she said.
At this point, it was mid-October 2022, four months after the Dobbs ruling that allowed states to once again regulate abortion access and the legal and legislative chaos that followed. One of the few places in the country where Angus could get an abortion at her stage of pregnancy was a clinic in Boulder, Colorado. In Montana, the gestational age limit for abortion is 21 weeks, so she knew she couldn’t return home.
“This clinic [in Boulder] was overwhelmed because all the states that had access earlier no longer had it or it had to be ready much later,” Angus said. “From the time we made the decision, we had to wait two weeks.”
When she arrived for her admission appointment, she was 26 weeks pregnant. There were protesters outside the clinic, so an escort with an umbrella protected Angus and her husband as they entered the clinic.
“I remember how angry and furious I was with them. They have no idea what is going on,” she said. “They don’t care how much my baby will suffer when it is born.”
She was discharged a few days later. Angus said it was demanding to face the reality that she had lost even the last spark of hope.
“I’ve probably never been so scared. No one talks about what it’s like to have an abortion at the end of the second trimester. What am I supposed to feel? What’s going to happen? Who am I supposed to talk to about this?” she said.
After the procedure, the doctor told her that it was a challenging process because there was a lot of fluid buildup in the fetus’ body. Angus said she could tell just by looking at the fetus.
“I didn’t see his whole body because his health was so poor, but you could just see that it would have been a really horrible death for him on earth,” she said.
Insurance did not cover the costs, so Angus and her husband had to spend $10,000 of their savings on travel, accommodations, and the procedure.
Angus continues to be frustrated as IVF becomes the modern political target
Throughout 2023, Angus had many egg retrieval appointments, but she said the process was very emotionally and financially exhausting.
“We are very fortunate that my husband receives benefits through his work, but we are also at the end of those benefits, so this is our last IVF retrieval cycle,” she said.
She has an embryo transfer planned for September, but if that is not successful, she worries that future political decisions regarding IVF will limit her options. There is only a clinic that offers IVF treatments in Montana.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos are “children” and several IVF clinics in the state closed their doors over liability concerns. In the months since, some states have taken steps to ensure access to the treatment, but congressional legislation protecting IVF at the federal level has not progressed and a politically influential religious sect spoke out against it on ethical grounds, which could potentially trigger further ideological conflicts.
The modern political battle over IVF and her experience with an abortion have made Angus fearful that there are no explicit protections for the treatment in her state. It has also made her passionate about telling her story, even at the Montana Legislature In early 2023, lawmakers failed to introduce a bill that would have eased some of the remaining restrictions on abortion access in the state.
Although access is still widely available in Montana, Republicans have tried to change that since the Dobbs decision. Governor Greg Gianforte signed several anti-abortion bills into law in 2023, including a 20-week ban, but they have so far blocked in courtGianforte continues to operate his executive power to limit Medicaid funding and dictate who can perform abortions.
The Republicans in Parliament have also Make clear They do not support a popular initiative in November to add a right to abortion to the state constitution, and at least one candidate supported by a national anti-abortion group is running for a seat in Congress.
“I’m so angry that politicians are interfering in an extremely intimate part of my life. I’m trying to grow my family the best I can in a loving and sustainable way and they think they know better than me and that offends me so much,” she said.
