Harrowing tales of red state dystopia

Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 08:00
Updated
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 08:00
That’s Texas. Here’s Oklahoma: The molar pregnancy Jaci Statton had would never become a baby. It was cancerous, though. At the last hospital in Oklahoma she went to during her ordeal last month, Statton says staff told her and her husband that she could not get a surgical abortion until she became much sicker. “They were very sincere; they weren’t trying to be mean,” Statton, 25, says. “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.'” Jaci Statton’s pregnancy ordeal began in late February. She’s a stay-at-home mom living near Shawnee in central Oklahoma. She and her husband, Dustin Statton, have three kids – two seven year olds and an eight year old. Dustin is an oil field technician, and they have a fishing guide business – she says she and her family go fishing every day. After weeks of feeling terrible – nauseous and dizzy and weak – Statton had a sudden episode of heavy bleeding that sent her to the emergency room. At her OB-GYN the next day, she learned she had a type of molar pregnancy, in which some of the tissue is cancerous. Molar pregnancy happens when a fertilized egg has too many chromosomes. It does not develop into a viable fetus.…