'Beginning of a scary time': Ectopic pregnancy survivor 'would have died' if she didn't seek a medical abortion
Heathyr Stanics believes she would have died if she hadn't sought a medical abortion.
In 2019, the then-35-year old, an insurance agent from the US state of Georgia, developed an ectopic pregnancy.
Her embryo started growing in her left fallopian tube, a life-threatening complication that renders the pregnancy non-viable.
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Heathyr Stanics and her partner Dalton were overjoyed when they fell pregnant, but "after several ultrasounds" doctors couldn't see anything in her uterus. That's when they realised it was an ectopic pregnancy. Supplied
Removing the embryo is the only course of treatment.
Stanics was given four doses of methotrexate - a drug used to treat ectopic pregnancies and induce a medical abortion.
Three weeks after her final dose, her fallopian tube burst.
She was getting ready for work when the "excruciating" pains started.
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An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fetus develops outside the uterus, typically in a fallopian tube. They are life-threatening for the mother, and always end in pregnancy loss. iStock
"It honestly started out feeling like the worst gas pains I ever had in my life," she told 9news.com.au.
"A point came where I was doubled over in pain.
"I went and laid down on my bed but the pain wasn't subsiding.
"I started crying because the pain started to become unbearable.
"At this point my boyfriend heard me crying and was about to dial 911, but knowing how much an ambulance ride was, I insisted on calling my doctor directly instead.
"We were told to come in immediately for an ultrasound, where we discovered my uterus was filled with blood, after that I was rushed into emergency surgery."
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During surgery, doctors took 768 millilitres of blood from Stanics' uterus, along with the embryo and her left fallopian tube.
Stanics said without the quick care of medical professionals she would have died, adding the drug was meant to stop embryonic cells from growing.
"If I was not given these doses, the embryo would have grown inside my fallopian tube and would have burst much sooner," she said.
"I would have died."
Post-Roe 'the beginning of a very scary time in America'
Ectopic pregnancies occur in one-in-50 pregnancies, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAF).
Stanics said she now fears for other women following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
This ended 50 years of constitutional federal protection for abortion, and post-Roe, doctors in some states have been left in a legal grey area.
"The overturn of Roe v. Wade feels like the beginning of a very scary time here in America," she said.
"Before sharing my story, I didn't realise how many of my own friends experienced something similar."
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The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. AP
Twenty-six states are now likely to ban abortion to the "fullest extent possible," the Guttmacher Institute predicts.
Of these, 13 have enacted trigger laws that would automatically ban medically unnecessary abortion in the first and second trimesters.
These states are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
While most of these states will make exceptions should a pregnancy be deemed life-threatening to a mother, it will fall to doctors to prove whether a patient qualifies.
And in emergency situations, where time is of the essence, doctors have to grapple between whether preserving the life of a mother - over a fetus - is legally sound.
This week, several nurses shared an anonymous case where a doctor had to phone lawyers when an ectopic pregnancy ruptured to ensure everything had been documented correctly.
The nurses claimed it took nearly 12 hours to get the patient to theatre.
They kept the US state it occurred in anonymous to protect the facility's identity.
It comes after a June article in The American Journal of Bioethics found people with pregnancy complications or adverse outcomes, such as miscarriages or stillbirths, might become vulnerable to legal surveillance and even criminal prosecution.
This is not the America Stanics knows.
"I'm truly in fear of where we're headed as a country," she said.
"The last few days have been extremely emotional for so many women in this country; we're disposable now."
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