Shocking: Pregnant Woman’s Desperate Escape to Oregon Amid Louisiana’s Abortion Ban Leaves America Speechless!

CNN
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When Victoria, 45, realized she was five weeks late and the lines came back positive on two pregnancy tests, the New Orleans resident devised a plan to have an abortion.

Traveling out of state was the only abortion option for Victoria, who asked CNN to withhold her last name for fear of backlash against her and her family. Louisiana is one of several states that have basically banned all abortions.

“It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through, from the moment I found out I was pregnant at 45 to having to take time off work, travel across the country, meet with a doctor, and then take the pills and then come home and then go to work like nothing happened,” Victoria told CNN about her experience earlier this year.

Victoria’s story of the distance she traveled and the hardship she endured to get an abortion reflects a larger American reality, where women seeking the procedure must navigate through a mosaic of states with different levels of access.

The average travel time to an abortion center more than tripled, from less than 30 minutes to more than an hour and a half, after the The US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to a November report study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And for women in Texas and Louisiana, average travel times to the nearest abortion center it was seven more hours, almost a full business day in travel time to abort.

Victoria says she was grateful to be able to drop everything and afford to spend $1,000 on the procedure, including airfare for the same week with connections both ways and appointment and medication fees.

“It was very difficult for me to understand the fact that I was able to do this, but I am one of the lucky ones and there are so many women who are in much more difficult positions,” Victoria said. “And, God, what are they going to do?”

Victoria says the plans came to fruition quickly once she learned which states seemed most accessible.

She investigated the parameters for abortion in a state, how long you would need to be away from work, travel options, and how soon you could get an appointment. She found abortionfinder.org to be a helpful and reliable source, she says.

“Because the situation is so fluid, it changes from day to day, that was really of the utmost importance to me to be able to have a reliable source of information,” he said.

Driving to a neighboring state was not an option, since all of Louisiana’s border states have an equally restrictive law that prohibits virtually all abortions. Victoria says she considered nearby states, like Florida, but ultimately ruled them out because available appointments were farther away.

“Once I saw that Oregon was so, so protective of reproductive rights, I said, ‘Why would I think of going anywhere else?’” she said. “By the time I got the final pregnancy result, I said, ‘Okay, let’s book a flight to Oregon. When can we do this?’”

She approached a college friend and asked if she could stay with her, detailing the reason for her visit. He then made an appointment and booked a flight for that week, she says.

The provider sent instructions, including that the patient must be in Oregon for the telehealth appointment, according to documents provided to CNN. She was contacted an hour after making the appointment to make sure she had proof of travel documents because she had come from Louisiana, where the procedure is illegal.

Victoria planned to take a day off to fly across the country and work remotely for two days, which fits her hybrid work situation. She says she was grateful to have a supportive boss who showed understanding for why she had to take unexpected time off.

“She was the only person I really broke down and cried for,” Victoria said. “I think it’s because she had been holding him back all week, and telling him that it was the last thing she needed to be in her shoes before she could do everything.”

Victoria says the hardest part of her experience was telling her mom because she didn’t know how her mom would feel about it. Victoria and her siblings were raised Catholic. Her father had a strong faith and her mother was a non-practicing Catholic, her mother says. Victoria’s mother asked not to be named for privacy reasons.

Victoria’s mother says that she wanted to support her daughter, although she disagrees with what her daughter did. Coming to her with purchased tickets and a complete plan, Victoria made it easy for her mother to support her, her mother says.

“I agreed to take her to the airport and that that was the only thing I could do because it would be a real game changer in her life,” her mother said. “I wanted to support what she wanted to do because she has supported me through several family crises. She just wanted to do it because I love her. “

Victoria said she appreciated her mother for supporting her in a way she didn’t expect. They talked about some of her mother’s friends who had miscarried over the years, they both say. Victoria’s mother even told her about her when she tried to get her tubes tied, but her husband found out about her and she didn’t go through with it.

“I feel like if anything, it has strengthened our relationship,” Victoria said. “However, we already had a fantastically strong relationship. So, it’s another stone in the wall.”

After boarding early on a Wednesday in March, Victoria traveled eight hours on two flights, landing in Portland, Oregon.

Victoria met up with her friend and they did the things old friends do, from staying up late talking about college memories to talking about why Victoria was there. Both described the situation as surreal.

“The vast majority of the reproductive conversations I have with friends right now are people who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” said her friend, Emily, who asked that CNN not use her last name to maintain Victoria’s privacy. “The kind of irony is that there could still be an unplanned pregnancy and it would still be as devastating as it would have been when we were in our teens and early 20s, it was a bit of a shock to me.”

Emily, who has been friends with Victoria for about 25 years, says it was very easy for her to drive to the airport and let her friend stay with her.

“I was honored that she trusted me,” she said. “I was very proud of Victoria. He impressed me that she had taken it easy and that he had reached out to someone he knew; I think a lot of people would have been embarrassed or covered it up.”

After the telehealth appointment the next day, Victoria received an overnight package.

Victoria took two medications as part of a medical abortion. she took mifepristone at her friend’s house. The next day she took misoprostol before boarding her flight home; she was careful not to take them in her home state, where it is illegal.

“It was like a heavy period,” he said. “I took some Aleve, had to get some extra large pads, and bled a lot on the flights home, but it was okay.”

Physically, he felt fine; she became more aware of what was going on psychologically, she says.

“I had this feeling that I should be having some kind of deep psychological moment of reckoning or something, but I didn’t really feel that,” Victoria said of the experience. “I have never wanted to have a child. I was not torn by this decision.”

When Victoria found out she was pregnant, much of the shock was because she didn’t think she could get pregnant at 45, she says.

“You hear a lot culturally about you being forty years old, being told that you are too old to get pregnant and have a child at full term,” she said. “I feel like I had a kind of false sense of security.”

Victoria joked that she “is nearing menopause” but says she hasn’t been diagnosed as perimenopausal.

News of her pregnancy came several months after she was treated for uterine fibroid, a benign growth, in July 2022, according to medical records. Victoria also tested positive for a PALB2 gene mutationwhich can lead to a higher chance of breast cancer, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. She underwent a preventative double mastectomy and reconstruction in early 2022, according to medical records provided to CNN.

She says she got an excellent standard of care around her surgeries, but felt dissonant with her state’s abortion laws.

“It felt so surreal to get this really high level of attention around my secondary sexual characteristics, but then to have that freeze, slam shut when it comes to reproductive health, it just felt abrupt,” she said.