I have a friend who had placenta accreta and almost died. She was diagnosed with placenta previa during the last trimester (she was 44), but by that time she was too far along to have any testing to determine how severe the placenta previa was. During the C-section she suffered an amniotic fluid embolism that almost killed her, then began hemorrhaging. The placenta had attached to her bladder and she ended up losing a section of the organ; she later hemorrhaged again and was rushed back to surgery, where doctors opted to leave her incision open until the next day in case it happened again. Doctors opted to do a full hysterectomy and put in mesh to reconstruct her abdomen. During the course of all this, she was given a cocktail of more than 25 drugs, one (or two or 14) of which then triggered Stevens-Johnson syndrome which progressed to TENS. She spent the first 6 weeks of her new baby’s life in a burn unit where her skin, from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet, blistered and peeled away. She still bears the scars from TENS all over her body, and her stomach remains distended from scar tissue; 7 years after giving birth she is often asked by strangers when her baby is due. She was unable to be in direct sunlight for 2 years, and to this day remains afraid of taking ANY drug, since doctors were unable to determine which drug(s) caused the TENS. Yes, she has a beautiful daughter from the ordeal, but it took a tremendous toll on her body and family that none would want to repeat again.

Right-to-lifers would probably call her a hero. But if anyone had known what she would have to endure, there is no way she would have made the choice to keep the baby.

As an aside, this ordeal happened in Costa Rica, in a private hospital. I’ve often wondered if she would have lived had she been in the US, with the “best medical care in the world.”