The doctor would treat her sickle cell pain crisis — if she promised not to get an abortion
Here are some things A. was told when she arrived at the hospital one night in June 2023. That she couldn’t have the pain medicine she usually got for a sickle cell crisis because she was six weeks pregnant, but she could have Tylenol. That if she just took her blood thinner everything would be fine. That she needed to leave, and if she still felt bad by the time she’d wheelchaired out into the parking lot, she could turn around and check herself back into the emergency room.
She asked to speak to someone higher up. She was angry, but mostly she was in pain: crying pain, pain that made it hard to move and hard to speak, pain that other people couldn’t understand, that sometimes made her wish to be in a coma, anything to make it go away. Her blood pressure was spiking. She knew from experience that, left untreated, this kind of crisis could lead to a seizure.
