On the morning of May 2, hours before the leaked Supreme Court draft striking down Roe v. Wade, I sat waiting for an infusion of Herceptin, an essential drug I was prescribed when diagnosed with breast cancer. Herceptin has saved countless women’s lives since 1990, but it can cause fetal harm.
I was denied medical care until I could prove I wasn’t pregnant. Where was my agency in this situation? And what if I had been pregnant? Would I have been denied the very drug that saved my life and which protects my future—which ensures that my young children will continue to have a mother—in order to protect a pregnancy I did not want or plan to keep?