9 months ago
34
By Christopher O’Donnell
Tampa Bay Times
This pregnancy felt different.
After the heartache of more than a dozen miscarriages, Anya Cook was 16 weeks along. She and husband Derick Cook spent a Sunday last December sharing the news with his parents and looking at cribs.
As they left a restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida, that evening, Cook’s water broke. Her husband rushed her to the nearest emergency room.
Cook, 36, still believed the baby they had nicknamed “Bunny” could be saved. Doctors told her she would miscarry in the next 24 hours, she said, and that the fetus was too premature to survive.
The early rupturing of her amniotic sac left Cook at risk of infection and complications including hemorrhaging. But her pregnancy was beyond Florida’s then-15-week restriction on abortion and an ultrasound showed the fetus still had a detectable heart rate, according to hospital records Cook shared with the Tampa Bay Times.
Though Florida’s law allowed abortions to protect the health of the mother, Cook said, a doctor told her he would be risking his license if he induced labor, essentially performing an abortion. He gave her two antibiotic injections to reduce the risk of infection and sent her home, she said.
“I told him, ‘You’re leaving me to die,’” she said.
