Tennessee’s backwards and restrictive abortion laws officially started the self-abortion ball rolling, according to the Murfreesboro Post.
On Wednesday, December 9, Murfreesboro Police Detective Tommy Roberts arrested Anna Yocca for attempted murder after investigating, and figuring out Yocca performed a self-abortion with a coat hanger in September. As a result, Yocca sits in jail on a $200,000 bond.
And The Self-Abortion begins…
Pro-Choice advocates knew self-abortions would increase once restrictive laws were passed across the nation. This is the ultimate “I told you so” moment.
Whatever the reason was that Yocca didn’t get an abortion earlier in her pregnancy, she obviously felt her situation was bad enough to need an abortion in the first place, and felt compelled to do a self-abortion at six months pregnant.
Yocca drew a hot bath, slipped into the water, and slid a coat hanger into her vagina, thinking that killing the fetus was a better alternative – but to what?
Doctors saved the fetus – now called Baby Yocca – but at what cost? After Yocca’s boyfriend took her to St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital because she was bleeding badly, and feared for her own safety, she was transferred to St. Thomas Mid-Town in Nashville, Tennessee, where doctors were able to save the fetus, according to the Murfreesboro Post.
The baby, a boy born at 1.5 pounds, will live out the rest of his days in need of medical care because of damaged eyes, lungs, and heart from the coat hanger self-abortion, according to Raw Story.
Baby Yocca will experience a life of suffering from these and other still unknown problems as a result.
Abortion Restrictions Cost Dearly
Back alley abortions, popular before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, often left women dead or maimed for life.
Tennessee’s laws are particularly restrictive, and likely helped cause the situation. Specifically, abortions are banned after 20 weeks. Any “attempt to procure a miscarriage,” or any doctor who doesn’t attempt to “preserve the life of baby born alive,” viable or not, is guilty of a Class E Felony, according to FindLaw.
There are many reasons why a woman doesn’t get an abortion early in the pregnancy:
- Some women can’t come up with the money.
- Some women can’t figure out the obstacles and other state law hoops they have to jump through. By the time they do figure out the procedure, it’s often too late for a legal abortion.
- Other women don’t even know they are pregnant until they are well into their second trimester.
Tennessee employs Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) laws, which restrict abortion doctors and clinics in the hopes of closing them down, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America. The TRAP laws impose medically unnecessary provisions and place undue burdens on women – the epitome of unconstitutional.
These and other abortion restrictions often interfere with women having abortions earlier in the pregnancy and, as a result, women pay sometimes double, or even triple the price of a first trimester abortion out of pocket.
The result of Tennessee’s backwards laws is – in this case – a permanently handicapped child in need of special care to endure a life of suffering – if he makes it out of the hospital alive – and a woman in jail because she a first trimester abortion was impossible.
We don’t know why Yocca, due in court December 21, self-aborted. It is one of many questions that need answers. Another question is whether Tennessee, which forced the doctors to save a potentially nonviable fetus, will bear the exorbitant monetary costs and burden of Baby Yocca’s medical needs, or the burden of the baby’s pain, and suffering the rest of his life.
Is stopping abortion in Tennessee worth the harm done to Baby Yocca, or other borderline viable fetuses saved as a result of medically impossible and unnecessary requirements?
Featured Image: Mugshot of Anna Yocca via WKRN
