Thea Thompson was about 18 weeks pregnant when an ultrasound technician told her in September that she was going to have a baby girl. She and her husband were excited to welcome a second child into their family.
But the good news stopped there.
Thompson, 37, was having a detailed ultrasound after previous genetic testing showed her fetus had a small risk of developing abnormalities. She could tell her medical team did not like what they saw.
“My husband and I are just freaking out. He's squeezing my hand, we’re just so panicked, so stressed,” Thompson said.
Finally her doctor tells them: The fetus had fluid around its brain and holes in its heart. Its umbilical cord only had two blood vessels instead of three and its face wasn't developing properly.
“He basically says, with all of these things — with one of them, you know it might not have been as bad, but with all of these things, from what he could see on the ultrasound, the baby wasn't going to live,” said Thompson.
Thompson’s bloodwork and ultrasound indicated her fetus had a genetic disorder, and it was likely fatal.
“We were just devastated,” she said.
Thompson, like many other women since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, would go on to find herself struggling with the consequences of state abortion bans even though she wanted to be pregnant. Now, she’s advocating for a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in Florida’s constitution, known as Amendment 4.
Qualifying for an exception can come with risks
Florida's six-week ban includes an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities in the first two trimesters. The law requires two physicians to certify in writing that “in reasonable medical judgment,” the fetus will die upon birth or “imminently thereafter.”
Thompson and her doctor discussed the option, she said, but he told her due to legal concerns, he couldn't sign off on an abortion until she got a more invasive genetic test to confirm the diagnosis.
They scheduled the procedure, known as amniocentesis, for the next day. It involves sticking a needle into the uterus to extract fluid from the womb. Thompson’s doctor cautioned that results could take a week or two to come in, and that it could be harder to find a place to get an abortion the later in pregnancy she got, she said.
The next morning, Thompson woke up bleeding and cramping and went to the hospital thinking she may be having a miscarriage.
“I have this moment of just like relief thinking, ‘Oh my God I hope I’m having a miscarriage’ so I don’t have to go through these procedures and I don’t have to make this decision,” said Thompson.
Medical staff at the hospital told her she was not miscarrying, and that she was likely experiencing side effects from the ultrasound. They told her they could not provide abortion care and suggested Thompson go to her amniocentesis appointment.
When she got to the clinic, a maternal fetal medicine specialist told her she was at higher risk for the procedure to cause her water to break early, a condition known as preterm premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM. That could lead to serious infection, something that Thompson said she’d seen firsthand in her nursing career.
She chose not to get the test.
“I just didn't want to put myself through that, my own health through that, my husband through that, you know our child, it's dangerous,” Thompson said.
Doctors say confusion and fear are impacting patient care
Instead, a few days later, Thompson and a family member traveled out-of-state so she could get an abortion at a hospital in the Northeast. Her husband stayed behind in St. Petersburg with their 2-year-old while she had the procedure.
“We couldn’t even grieve together, we had to be separate and it was horrible,” said Thompson.
Advocates for Amendment 4 say Florida's six-week abortion ban harms women. They want to allow abortions in Florida until fetal viability, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy, or after that if a patient’s health care provider deems necessary.
Right now, patients with pregnancy complications are having trouble getting care because doctors are worried about violating the law, said Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a family planning specialist who works with Planned Parenthood in Miami.
On a recent media call with other doctors who support the amendment, Daniels shared her own encounter with a patient who had been turned away by doctors despite ultrasounds showing she had a nonviable pregnancy.
“The exception criteria are so narrow that they can't possibly address every single case, so if a doctor gets audited and the state challenges their judgment, they could be fined, lose their license and sent to jail,” Daniels said.
A September report from a group called Physicians for Human Rights featured accounts from clinicians about the challenges determining whether a severe abnormality would be considered “imminently lethal.”
The exceptions are working for some individuals, according to state data. There have been 386 abortions performed in Florida so far this year due to “fatal” or “serious” fetal abnormalities, with more than half done after the first trimester. But that is still much less than the 757 performed in 2021, the last full year in which abortion was legal in the state until viability.
Infants have died from birth defects in Florida at higher rates since abortion bans were first implemented in July 2022, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported this week.
Amendment opponents say Florida law protects women
Gov. Ron DeSantis defends the exceptions and warns doctors who fail to treat a woman in danger could face malpractice penalties.
His administration has used taxpayer resources to produce advertisements and launch a website that say things like “Current Florida Law Protects Women, Amendment 4 Threatens Women’s Safety.”
DeSantis has also spent recent weeks hosting press events advocating against Amendment 4.
During one in Clearwater on Monday, he said the amendment's backers are highlighting extreme cases of women denied care — including some that occurred in other states. DeSantis argues they’re trying to distract voters from what he calls a “vague” amendment.
“Florida has exceptions, of course, for the health of the mother, life of the mother, incest, victims of human [trafficking] — all that stuff — and yet that's what they're focused on, so they're lying to you,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis urged voters to vote “no” on constitutional amendments as a “default,” arguing they are much harder to change in the future than actions taken by the legislature.
He was joined on stage by members of a group called Florida Physicians Against Amendment 4, including Dr. Ana Verdeja-Perez. The Plant City-based OB-GYN told the audience not to “fall for the scare tactics.”
“Our abortion laws protect the lives of the vulnerable women,” she said.
"Now, I’m mad."
But women like Thea Thompson say they shouldn't have to put their health at risk to qualify for care that they need.
“I should have been able to make the decision that I wanted to make at that moment,” she said about her September ultrasound. “I shouldn’t have even had to think about then doing additional testing and having to wait. We were already devastated, we were already just miserable. I didn’t want to push it out any longer.”
Thompson says testing after her abortion confirmed the fetus did have a fatal condition known as triploidy, where a cell has three copies of each chromosome instead of two. She asked WUSF not to publish where she traveled to get the procedure, because although the state says its abortion law penalties do not apply to pregnant women, she still has concerns.
While the treatment she received out-of-state was “the best care she could have possibly asked for,” Thompson said traveling for a second trimester abortion cost her family thousands of dollars and was emotionally traumatic.
“Looking back on it now, I'm mad,” Thompson said. “I'm really angry that I was put in that position because of the laws, because of the politicians who are making decisions about my own health.”
Thompson’s family is still working to process their loss.
"It's so fresh and so raw, and it's hard to talk about and it's scary to talk about publicly, but I don't want anyone else to go through what I had to go through and what all these women who come out publicly and share their stories had to go through," Thompson said.
Amendment 4 needs at least 60% of the vote to pass, a higher threshold than in other states that have passed ballot measures that support abortion rights.
Early voting wraps up this weekend ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
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