On June 19, the state of Ohio declared that I had a voluntary abortion. My rabbi and my doctors disagreed. I simply wanted to be pregnant.

The ordeal began two weeks earlier; I was in stirrups. The sonogram technician needed more images. When she got them she looked ashen. "You should see a doctor today," she emphasized as she handed me the printed image of my 13-week-old baby or fetus, I still don't know what word to use. "But there is a heartbeat. Thank god there is a heartbeat," I mumbled. I had been here before. But last time, during my first pregnancy, there was no heartbeat.

I waited. I overheard the technician as she looked at the screen with the doctor, "this is bad, this is really bad." He wasn't my doctor, but he had a soft voice with a southern kick that I liked. He saw me, gestured for me to come to his office, and referred to the ailing life in my belly as a baby. "This isn't good," he whispered. "It's really not. Let me show you." He was kind but clear. "The organs are not inside the baby's body. The hands and feet are curled, actually one limb seems to be stunted or missing. The neck isn't right. This really doesn't look good." I looked at the expanded sonogram on his desk. I saw the hands turned in, the area that he referred to as the organs, the dead space where there should be a limb. Minutes ago, I had looked at this same image and smiled. "I don't understand," I replied. "What do I do now?" "Why don't you wait a week," he offered. "I don't understand," I repeated, "can the baby survive? Can these problems be solved? I don't understand exactly what you are telling me." "No, I don't think so," he said finally, "but there are always miracles."

I was withered, but functional. I knew this could happen and knew that I could recover. I had been blessed with a healthy child in between and felt, in my Nana's words, "Why should this be easy?" I decided to wait out the week. Looking pregnant, I returned to work, still hoping that maybe with more quiet time, with more love, next week the baby would be better. As I sat down at my desk, my own doctor called. To him, it was a fetus. "Tamara, I have looked at the scans and I have shown the scans to doctors in my office. I want to tell you that we all agree that this fetus is not compatible with life. It will not survive the pregnancy. You should get it removed immediately. The longer you wait the more risks are involved." I hung up the phone. (more)