- An Oklahoma woman with a cancerous pregnancy said she was told to wait until she was sick enough to get treatment.
- Jaci Statton told NPR that she went to three hospitals before she had to go to Kansas for an abortion.
- “I didn’t go to that clinic just to get rid of my baby. I had to go there to save my life,” she told Fox 25.
An Oklahoma woman with a cancerous pregnancy said hospital workers asked her to wait in the parking lot until she started “bumping” before they could give her an abortion last month.
Jaci Statton had a partial molar pregnancy, a rare complication in which the placenta has irregular tissue, NPR reported. Molar pregnancies can cause a rare form of cancer and usually result in early miscarriage, according to the mayo clinic. They occur in about 1% of pregnanciesaccording to the Cleveland Clinic.
Statton and her husband have three young children, own a fishing guide company, and go fishing every day. The couple was looking forward to welcoming a new son into their family, NPR reported.
Statton told NPR that the hospital staff was “very candid” and wasn’t trying to be mean when she was turned away.
“They said, ‘The best thing we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we’ll be ready to help you,'” Statton told NPR. “But we can’t touch you unless you’re crashing in front of us or your blood pressure gets so high you’re about to have a heart attack.”
oklahoma has three laws prohibiting abortion, with conflicting definitions of when exceptions are allowed, according to NPR. In March, the state supreme court ruled that abortions should be allowed if a patient’s life is in danger.
Statton said doctors at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center told her that although she was experiencing severe symptoms from her molar pregnancy, they couldn’t help her and she only had about two weeks to live. Fox 25 reported.
OU Health did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on Wednesday.
‘you will die’
“They said… ‘You’ll die.’ I had cancer cysts, pockets of cancer around my baby, inside my uterus, and every time one of those would rupture, I would bleed,” Statton told the local station.
Statton told NPR that she was transferred to three different Oklahoma hospitals, all of which told her they couldn’t give her a abortionbefore the doctors suggested that he leave and go to a state where abortion was legal.
She and her husband then headed to a Kansas abortion clinic where they performed an abortion on her, according to the outlet.
Statton described the ordeal as “heartbreaking” and said she felt alone during the process and wished she had gone to her own doctors and hospitals that she is familiar with for medical care, Fox 25 reported.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t just go to that clinic to get rid of my baby. I had to go there to save my life,” she told the outlet.
