Wood River Valley Women Deserve Care Close to Home
By Sheridan Brett
During the summer of 2023, I was pregnant with our family’s third child. At 12 weeks, an ultrasound showed both a strong heartbeat and a devastating fatal fetal diagnosis. My doctors were clear that our deeply wanted pregnancy was simply not viable.
My regular OB/GYN was out of town, so I was sent to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Boise. He told me that a year earlier, he would have done a D&C, a routine procedure that helps women medically miscarry when their bodies won’t naturally terminate a doomed pregnancy. A D&C is a type of abortion, and under Idaho's abortion ban, he couldn't help me. He couldn't even talk to me about my options.
My regular doctor, from out of town, was as frantic as I was to get me help before something terrible happened that would threaten my life and future fertility, such as sepsis. We decided I’d need to go to Eastern Washington, where I could be seen for a D&C only up to 15 weeks.
If I stayed in Idaho, my only option was to wait. Most of the time, a pregnancy like mine ends in a natural miscarriage. Mine didn't. Waiting meant facing sepsis and continuing to carry a doomed pregnancy until it ended in a stillborn delivery, adding trauma to our family and compromising my health. I had my loving partner and two beautiful, healthy children at home to think about, and I knew I needed to stay healthy for them.
I squeezed into an appointment in Washington. I was “lucky,” because I had the means to travel out of state, a supportive partner, and no job to worry about since I'm mostly a stay-at-home mom. We had extended family to help out. How would a woman who can't take time off work, who can't find $3,000 in cash or travel 1,000 miles navigate this situation? The same fatal fetal diagnosis could change the rest of her life.
The word "abortion" has been mis-defined for a long time. It has been treated as a certain kind of act by a certain kind of woman, and something we don’t speak out in polite company. But in medicine, it is an umbrella over a whole menu of care. A D&C is miscarriage care. So is medication that helps a body finish a miscarriage it can't complete on its own. These same treatments end wanted pregnancies that have gone wrong, often because of genetic problems no family would ever choose.
If you oppose abortion, please talk with the women in your life. You won't have to look far. Someone one or two degrees from your circle has needed miscarriage care or had a pregnancy go wrong. Having two pregnancies resulting in two healthy children, which was my story until 2023, is rare.
Needing abortion or miscarriage care is part of womanhood. It shouldn't be hidden when it is this common and so nuanced. It’s why we don’t need politicians making complicated decisions about our health and our families for us.
On Nov. 3, Idaho voters can vote yes on Proposition 1 to restore Idaho’s abortion laws to how they were for 50 years. If Prop. 1 passes, a specialist in Boise could once again do the D&C he knew I needed, without sending me out of state or waiting for me to get sick. Women in Idaho should be cared for by her own doctor, close to home and community.
Sheridan Brett is the mother of two children and lives in Ketchum.
