My husband is active duty in the Navy and we are stationed in Japan. I had my first daughter here. When she was about two I became pregnant again and we were very excited. Everything was going completely fine until the anatomy scan at 21 weeks. There we found out she had anencephaly, basically no brain. It is one hundred percent fatal, and if she made it full term she would die within minutes. There are other possible complications with giving birth to a baby with anencephaly but even before knowing those we knew what we wanted to do. There was no baby, there was just a pregnancy and I wanted to terminate it.
Unfortunately for us and for other service members and dependents, we have Tricare and therefore no coverage for abortion. Out of pocket in Japan at this stage would’ve been $8,000 or more, and I was only five days away from their limit of 22 weeks. The only real option was to fly to California and have it done at Planned Parenthood. Last minute tickets for international travel are of course really expensive, so I flew out alone.
I was treated with a lot of care at Planned Parenthood. I expected decency but they went far beyond that. They really cared about my feelings and comfort. It was a relief to have that after being let down by the system.
