An Oklahoma woman with a cancerous pregnancy said she was told by hospital staff to wait in the parking lot until she was sick enough to get access to abortion care, according to NPR.
Jaci Statton,25, and her husband Dustin were expecting their fourth child. But, in late February Jaci started bleeding heavily and was rushed to the emergency room. She was informed that she had a partial molar pregnancy, a rare complication in which the placenta has irregular tissue, and the fetus has zero chance of survival.
A molar pregnancy can result in a rare form of cancer and requires early treatment, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Statton’s doctors told her she was at risk of hemorrhage and even death, but they could not treat her because that would require a dilation and curettage or D&C, which is a procedure to remove pregnancy tissue from the uterus.
“They were very sincere; they weren’t trying to be mean,” Statton told NPR. “They said, ‘The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack.'”
Oklahoma has three overlapping abortion bans, with different and sometimes contradictory definitions and exceptions, NPR reported. The state supreme court has ruled that abortions must be allowed if a patient’s life is in danger. Still, doctors are reluctant to perform the procedure.
Statton said she was transferred to three different hospitals in the state including University of Oklahoma Medical Center where doctors told her she only had about two weeks to live and they could not help her.
“They said… ‘You will die.’ I had cancer cysts, cancer pockets around my baby, inside my uterus, and anytime one of those ruptured, I would bleed,” Statton told Fox 25 News.
Her doctors eventually suggested that she travel to another state where abortion is legal to get the procedure done and save her life.
Statton and her husband went to an abortion clinic in Kansas where she was able to get a D&C, but she is still not out of the woods. Statton told NPR that she has another surgery to remove more cancerous tissue, and she may need chemotherapy.
“It wasn’t, for lack of better words, I’m sorry, I didn’t just go into that clinic to get rid of my baby,” Statton said. “I had to go in there for my life.”
After her near death experience Statton is calling for changes to Oklahoma’s abortion laws. “I don’t know how else to get attention, but this needs to change,” she said.
