For Anna, there would have been little to no time to get an abortion in Texas by the time she discovered her pregnancy. She and Scott were open to having a baby, even if a bit sooner than they might have planned, so they moved up their wedding plans to December.
When their wedding day arrived, Anna was 19 weeks pregnant. And she was in her wedding dress, getting makeup done with her bridesmaids, when she noticed something was wrong.
"It felt like something was coming out of me. So I freaked out. I literally wet my dress in the seat that I was in," she says.
Anna had to race against time
Anna's water had broken too early for the baby to survive. She and Scott spent the night of their wedding in the emergency room, trying to take in the heartbreaking news.
"Basically, the doctor looked at me and was like, well, the baby's underdeveloped," says Anna. "Even with the best NICU care in the world, they're not going to survive."
And as painful as it was to hear that, the doctors told Anna there was another urgent concern.
" 'You're at a high chance of going septic or bleeding out,' " she says the doctors told her — a risk of infection or hemorrhage, which could become deadly. " 'And unfortunately, we recommend termination, but we cannot provide you one here in Texas because of this law.' "
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"A physician who made that determination in the moment would be doing so knowing that if someone second-guessed their judgment, [anyone] could file a lawsuit saying that you violated SB 8," she says.
In the emergency room on their wedding night, Anna and Scott say the doctors appeared nervous and concerned but could do little to help them.
"I remember being like, what, why can't you just do this?" says Anna. "They couldn't even say the word 'abortion.' I could see the fear in these doctors' eyes that they were just so scared to even talk about it."
"They were typing stuff out on their phones and showing it to us," adds Scott, saying that the doctors were afraid to even be overheard helping them plan an abortion.
The next day, Anna's OB-GYN needed a plan to get Anna to a place where she could get the procedure as quickly as possible. They ruled out some nearby states, including Oklahoma and Arkansas, with mandatory waiting periods as long as three days.
"So there's two options," says Scott. "There's New Mexico and there's Colorado. Would we rather have her go into labor on a plane or, like, out by Midland in a car?"
"And I said absolutely not," says Anna's doctor, who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity over fears of facing lawsuits. "Because West Texas is at least eight or nine hours of desert. Sometimes you have hours with no cellphone reception, no gas station ... in the middle of a medical crisis. So I requested she at least take a flight. And make it a direct flight if possible."
But Anna says that plan came with its own set of risks. There's a lump in her throat as she talks about what could have happened on the plane.
"I had to come up with a game plan with my OB in case I went into labor on the flight. And I made sure that I bought us front-row seats so I could be close to the bathroom in case it happened. And I'm like, no one should ever have to do that."
But even through tears, Anna says she knows she was lucky to have several thousand dollars in savings to cover the cost — and to get an appointment in Colorado at all.
