Theresa Lee was 22 weeks pregnant last year when her doctor confirmed the news: she had no amniotic fluid and the baby she was expecting, who she had named Cielle, was not growing.

In many states across the US, Lee would have been advised that terminating the doomed pregnancy was an option, and possibly the safest course to protect her own life.

But in the state of Arkansas, Lee was told she had just one choice: wait it out.

A doctor who had confirmed the diagnosis was apologetic but insistent: the state’s laws meant he could be fined or jailed if he performed an abortion. In the wake of the US supreme court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Arkansas activated a so-called trigger law that made all abortion illegal except if a woman was in an acute medical emergency and facing death. There are no other exceptions: not for rape victims, minors or fatal fetal anomalies.

For the next five weeks, on a weekly basis, doctors knew Lee – already a mother to one-year-old Camille at the time – was at risk because she had placenta previa, which could cause bleeding and death. But she returned regularly to her OB-GYN’s office to be scanned, waiting to hear if Cielle’s fetal heartbeat had stopped.

“I was having to prepare for if I passed. Me and my husband had to have a lot of really tough conversations about all the outcomes, just to prepare in case I wasn’t going to be there for my husband and my daughter,” she said.