By Johnny Trlica
Commentary: In January of 1992, my sister and her husband were the parents of three young children, the oldest being five. They owned and operated a small machine shop in Pearland, Texas where they led a quiet but contented life.
The couple made a doctor’s appointment when my sister became concerned about a lump in her breast. Her worst fears were confirmed when she heard the words every woman lives in fear of: “You have cancer.â€
The cancer was very advanced, and her diagnosis was not good. But the doctor was not finished relaying news about her condition. She was also pregnant.
The doctors told her she had two options. One was to abort the pregnancy so the cancer could be treated as aggressively as her body would allow. Even so, her chances of beating the disease were not particularly good.
Option two was to try to bring the baby to term, and only treat the cancer to the degree that the chemotherapy and radiation would allow the unborn baby to grow and not be adversely affected by the treatment. Even still, she was given no assurances that either she or the baby would pull through.
It is important to understand that my sister, in 1992, had more healthcare rights than women in Texas do today. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, removing the federal constitutional right to abortion and allowing states to ban and restrict abortion access. Texas officials jumped at the opportunity to restrict women’s reproductive healthcare rights.
Texas is the largest state in the nation to ban nearly all abortions. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, and trying to prove a mother’s life is at risk can be a challenge. Texas abortion laws don’t make an exception for lethal fetal abnormalities, forcing some pregnant patients to carry pregnancies to term even if they are not expected to have viable outcomes.
Anyone who aids or abets an illegal abortion in Texas can be sued for wrongful death. This section of Texas abortion law is making doctors fearful of offering abortion to women as a healthcare option, even when the life of the mother is at risk. Doctors face criminal prosecution for abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
It is illegal to perform an abortion in Texas via the dispensing or mailing of the abortion-inducing medications mifepristone and misoprostol. Texas’ laws have narrow exceptions only to save the life or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function†of a pregnant patient.
Were these laws in effect in 1992, my sister most likely would not have had the options she was given.
State laws do not criminalize the person who has an abortion but Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president who is “proudly responsible†for killing abortion rights said, “There has to be some form of punishment [for women who have an abortion].†With that reasoning, would my sister have been arrested had she chosen to have an abortion?
My sister chose to try to bring her fourth child to term. The resolve and strength demonstrated during her pregnancy was awe-inspiring to behold. But she never doubted that she had made the correct choice.
In August of 1992, her baby was born at UTMB in Galveston. He was a month premature as the doctors induced labor, seeing that the mother’s health was failing, and the baby’s health would be in jeopardy otherwise.
A few days later, mother and child were released from the hospital and returned home to Pearland. On November 16, 1992, my sister, surrounded by her husband and four children, passed away quietly in her sleep. She was 34.
I learned a lot from my sister’s struggles those last few months of her life. One is to never underestimate the lengths a mother won’t go through for a child. Few people will know the sacrifices she made just to try to bring her child into the world.
Would my sister have been able to beat cancer had she aborted the pregnancy, we will never know. But it was her decision, a decision she was allowed to make, and I respected her for that.
I confess that I thought long and hard about telling my sister’s story in this context. I did not want to make her sacrifices and choices into a political statement although I am sure some will see it that way.
What I know is that as loving and caring as she was, and for whatever choices she made for herself, she would want her daughters and granddaughters to have the same rights and options as she did.