Two Oklahoma mothers are challenging state abortion bans in a new lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights last week. The women are seeking to prevent the laws from applying to pregnant Oklahomans who receive fatal fetal diagnoses, which means a pregnancy is likely to end in miscarriage or stillbirth or, in the event of live birth, the infant will not survive with or without medical support.
StateImpact's Jillian Taylor spoke with lead plaintiff Magon Hoffman about her experience.
Jillian Taylor: I wanted to start our conversation in September 2022. You had just found out you were pregnant with your second daughter, Lottie, and I wondered if you could take us back to the day you found out, and how you felt.
Magon Hoffman: So I have PCOS — which, a side effect of that is difficulties getting pregnant. So, I struggled with infertility. It took me a full year before I got pregnant the first time with my oldest daughter, Lainey. And we were on month three of trying with Lottie. So, to get pregnant that quickly was quite a shock. So we were really, just really excited.
JT: And so can you take me through the day you received the diagnosis?
MH: My husband and I went in for our anatomy scan at about 19 weeks, and we got in, and everything was seemingly normal. The tech who was doing our scan was very quiet. When they got to her head, they measured it, and it was showing 14 to 15 weeks. So, significantly smaller than the rest of her body. Between that and just the silence, you could just feel it. I immediately knew that something was wrong.
So Lottie specifically had anencephaly. She essentially did not have a brain and did not have a skull. And the doctor, right out of the gate, when he walked in, made it just very clear that she was not compatible with life.
He told us that we had two options. Option one would be to remain in the state. He would become our OB. We would go weekly and check on her progress, make sure that she was still alive, and do that all the way up until 37 weeks, where I would be induced, give birth, and then we essentially would have just been stuck watching our daughter die. The other option that he gave me was to leave the state of Oklahoma to receive an abortion.
JT: And so what did you have to do to access care outside of the state, and how much did that cost you?
MH: We just had to spend hours on the phone talking to different clinics, and the ones in Kansas had a two-week wait. After those two weeks, I no longer would have been under the umbrella of what's allowed there. So, slowly my options just started dwindling, of where I could go, what I could do. I eventually found a clinic in New Mexico that could get me in, in the right little time frame that I needed. And, on the phone with them, I had kind of this flashback of being at the anatomy center and remembering him saying that my placenta was partially covering my cervix – that that alone can cause complications; they were going to keep an eye on it.
And so then I started thinking, "Well, man, am I going to get there and they're going to tell me that they can't even do this?" And so, at this point, I had finally got a hold of the anatomy center, and they were just like, "We're so sorry, we think the only thing we could do is give you a list of centers available." And I was just like, "I guess, thank you, but Google already did that."
So then I'm calling back, and I'm like, "I don't really know what this means. I don't know what it means to have the placenta on the cervix. Is this even safe for me to go and do?" And they were just like, "You know that's something you're going to have to discuss with the clinic." And I'm like, "How? I'm not a medical professional. I don't know how to do that. What am I supposed to do?" And they had said, "We're not allowed to contact them. We're not allowed to give them your medical records. But you can verbally request them for yourself, and then we would have to give them to you."
But essentially, what ended up happening is this specific clinic had a partnership with the hospital there. I could have potentially needed a C-section to safely be able to complete this abortion. I think that they are one of only two places in the entire United States who can offer this kind of thing. So the idea that you could just leave the state and do what you need to do very quickly just became a false reality for me.
We ended up, all in all, spending about $3,000. Our insurance, had it happened in Oklahoma, would have covered it, but because it was out of state, it didn't. And then we had to travel. I was far enough along that it was a two-day procedure, so we had to travel to New Mexico, stay in a hotel, get up the next day, go back.
JT: Could you talk about that experience in the aftermath, just not being able to access that care in state?
MH: Once it was finally done and I knew that I had effectively, safely received this healthcare, that's really when the grief set in, and just the isolation I had been feeling really washed over me. I felt so alone. I felt paralyzed by all of it. I couldn't really go to grocery stores. I remember going and trying to avoid the baby section, but there's always baby stuff. I would just get really overwhelmed, or I would start to just feel really vulnerable. I don't know, I just felt like all these people, they know what I've done, and they are going to judge me, and they don't understand, and I was just so sad, and I was really struggling to cope with all of that.
Kind of the first small crack in that was about a week after we had gotten home. My husband had scheduled for Lottie to be cremated and, unfortunately, shipped back home to us. So, the ashes were scheduled to be delivered, and my husband had set it up to where they would just leave them on the door. I was home alone; I had lost my job at this point due to all the time that I had to take off. And so, I was just like, "I can't open that door. I can't see this part. It's just too much." And so he was like, "Don't worry, you don't have to."
And the guy gets there, and he's knocking, and he's not leaving, and he's knocking, and he's ringing the doorbell. My husband's like, "Do you need me to get on the doorbell camera and ask him to leave? Can you open it?" And I was just like, "No, that's so rude; don't tell him to leave." I don't know. I was panicking, and I opened the door, and he just said, like, "I saw where this package came from. I know I was supposed to leave it, but I just couldn't. I'm so sorry. I couldn't just leave this and walk away."
And I just said thank you, shut the door, and I broke down. It was really the first time that I received any form of empathy, of understanding, of caring. It really brings me back to what I feel like the Oklahoma standard is, and how, just kind of naturally, how we treat each other and how we show up for each other. I feel like, for the first time, that was when I was like, "OK, this is my state. Maybe these people don't all hate me. Maybe there are people out there who could understand."
JT: So now your experience is being amplified nationally through a new suit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. I wondered how you connected with that group.
MH: I believe that if you have support and access that others don't, I think that you should feel some level of obligation to do something about it. So, I mean, immediately after I got back home, I got in contact with the ACLU of Oklahoma, and I had just said, like, "Man, I don't want this to be me, but if there isn't anybody else, here I am." And, at that time, the Center for Reproductive Rights had already filed a handful of lawsuits against the state. And so the ACLU had just said if these are able to get passed and do what we want them to do, we wouldn't need to fight any further. And I was like, "Oh, thank God." And a couple of those did end up passing. But essentially, it didn't push the needle much. So I have been in contact with them off and on.
In hindsight, I'm thankful that I've had this time to heal, and I just feel a lot less vulnerable than I did. So three years is a long time, but I just feel like I'm more ready for this fight now than I definitely would have been then.
JT: So if the suit is successful in challenging state law, what would that mean to you?
MH: I know that what happened to me wasn't right. I don't really necessarily need a lawsuit to confirm what I know in my bones. What happened to my family, what we were forced to go through, was just not OK. It was wrong. Really, my goal with this lawsuit and what my hope would be is to just ensure that no other family in our state has to go through what we did. To give a small piece of dignity back to families who are in, likely, their most tragic situation. It just feels like the least that we could do.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
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