Can you describe an ectopic pregnancy?--And why it matters
/Here’s a little quiz! Is an ectopic pregnancy:
When a fertilized egg fails to implant in the uterus and exits the body as menstrual blood?
When a fertilized egg implants and begins to develop somewhere other than the uterus?
When a single fertilized egg divides in the uterus to produce twins?
If you guessed “B”, congratulations! Option “A” actually describes a miscarriage or pregnancy loss. Option “C” doesn’t have an official term (as far as I know) but it is the single most asked sex ed question from my elementary school students who, for some reason, are obsessed with learning about twins.
As a sexuality educator, I often teach about ectopic pregnancies. It’s when an egg that’s already been fertilized (meaning it’s connected with a sperm and is traveling down the Fallopian tube) decides to stop its journey in the Fallopian tube–or in the ovary or stomach or cervix or other inappropriate place. Rather than correctly implanting in the side of the uterus, where it can safely develop into a fetus, the fertilized egg instead implants someplace else in the body and begins to develop there.
This happens in 1 out of 50 pregnancies in the U.S. and if untreated, is deathly or disabling to the pregnant person.
In fact, untreated ectopic pregnancies are a leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester. And in the US, our maternal mortality rate is shockingly and unjustly high for a developed nation.
Ok, another question for you all:
Myth or fact? Ectopic pregnancies can be safely implanted in the uterus to develop into a healthy pregnancy.
The answer is nope. Not at all. This is completely a myth, one that’s being touted by anti-abortion protesters with no medical research to back it up.
The only way to protect a pregnant person who has an ectopic pregnancy is to have an abortion.
In very rare cases, the ectopic pregnancy ends in miscarriage on its own; but in the vast majority of cases, medical intervention (i.e. an abortion) is required.
An abortion is a completely safe medical procedure that safely ends a pregnancy by expelling the contents of the uterus. It’s safer than actually having a baby. It’s even safer than driving a car! (Compare abortion death rates to car accident death rates; it’s 1 in 100,000 versus 1 in 107….)
As someone who wants to get pregnant one day, I read the U.S. news today and got really scared. Today a Supreme Court brief was leaked stating the court’s majority opinion that the historic Roe vs. Wade case be revoked. This would overturn Americans’ constitutional right to abortion and would allow individual states to create policies for their constituents around access to abortion.
22 states in the U.S. have “trigger laws”, or laws severely restricting or banning access to abortion that would go into effect the moment Roe vs. Wade is overturned. Many of these laws would even ban abortion if the pregnant person’s life was in danger.
In Missouri, a bill would make it illegal for pregnant people to abort ectopic pregnancies. In Texas, a bill makes it illegal for someone to perform an abortion or aid someone in getting an abortion (like driving them to the clinic), even if the pregnant person is experiencing an incomplete miscarriage, or an embryo that has stopped developing but hasn’t left the uterus. Leaving the non-viable embryo can cause non-stop bleeding and infection for the pregnant person. In Oklahoma, a bill would make it illegal for someone to perform an abortion or aid someone in getting an abortion even if they’ve been raped or have experienced incest.
And this doesn’t even begin to touch the reasons for safe, legal, legitimate abortion outside of protecting the health to the pregnant person.
What this all means for me is that if I lived in Missouri and developed an ectopic pregnancy during my own pregnancy journey, I would likely die from complications since I wouldn’t be able to access a legal, life-saving abortion. If I lived in Texas, had an incomplete miscarriage, and had bleeding that wouldn’t stop, I would likely die of an infection since I wouldn’t be able to access a legal, life-saving abortion. If I lived in Oklahoma and–God forbid–was raped during my pregnancy journey, I would only have the option of a dangerous, illegal abortion if I didn’t want to give birth to my rapist’s child.
Oh but Leslie, you say. You don’t live in any of those states. You live in North Carolina where abortion access is currently (albeit shakily) protected. Oh but Leslie, you make enough money that you could travel to another state where abortion is legal if you had a complication in your pregnancy. Oh but Leslie, you have had access to comprehensive sex education and affordable birth control so you wouldn’t get pregnant in the first place if you didn’t want to.
Sure, but it could be me. These situations could happen to any of the uterus-bearing folks in your life–to any of the 50% of Americans with uteruses. And if any of our national political bodies turn more red, abortion could be nationally banned and only international travel and lots of money would make abortion accessible to me and everyone else.
It is vital that we find the empathy within ourselves to imagine what it’s like to have a different experience from our own. What would you do if you were in a life or death pregnancy situation? How do you think many uterus-owning folks are feeling right now after hearing this news? How do you think it feels to hear the nation’s most powerful leaders say that your life doesn’t matter? What do you think a person with a different background and set of privileges and oppressions than you has to worry about and consider related to pregnancy, abortion, and reproductive choices?
This news is terrifying. And definitely hits too close to home for me. So I urge everyone: go out and vote (midterm elections are here!). Practice and embrace empathy. And tell everyone you know about how ectopic pregnancies really work because we all–at a bare minimum–deserve to know the medically accurate and comprehensive facts about our bodies. And we all deserve to be healthy and safe.
