That time will forever be etched in Kayla Moore's memory. It was when doctors finally gave her medication to induce labor during which her 18-week-old daughter died and Moore almost died too, hemorrhaging so much in the hospital room that she had to have blood transfusions to save her life.
Moore's experience is one of many horrific stories about how abortion bans threaten the lives of pregnant women across the United States.
Moore, who lives in Fayetteville, wanted to have her baby, Claire Marie. All of her life, Moore has been conservative and not necessarily supportive of abortion rights. That all changed last month when she had to wait five harrowing days in a hospital until her life was in such grave danger that doctors finally agreed to administer labor-inducing medication.
Moore barely survived.
"I am really angry," Moore told the Arkansas Times. "I am grieving and in horrible pain, but I am angry as well. This should not have happened."
Moore was in Tennessee where her husband, who is in the military, is based. The red state has the same abortion laws as many others; all abortions are illegal except for narrow exceptions, including to save the life of the mother.
It was Columbus Day, Oct. 14, when Moore began having symptoms that she knew were concerning. She'd had miscarriages before. She immediately went to an emergency room near Fort Campbell, the military base. After waiting for eight hours, Moore learned her cervix was dilated, and that one of her baby's feet was coming out of her uterus. One option was a procedure called a cervical cerclage, essentially a stitch that could prevent a premature birth.
But the operating room at this hospital was not available, so Moore had to be transferred via ambulance in the middle of the night to another hospital in Nashville, where she did not get to see a doctor until the morning of Oct. 15. "I thought we had caught it early enough and it would be OK," Moore said.
During an exam, the doctor in Nashville accidentally broke Moore's water, which meant the cervical stitch option was no longer available due to high risks of infection. At 18 weeks pregnant, there was no chance that her daughter would survive. And it was extremely unlikely that Moore could carry the pregnancy until 22 weeks when there is a slim chance a baby could survive outside the womb.
Prior to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, doctors likely would have given Moore medication to induce labor. But because of the abortion ban Tennessee adopted after Roe, and because her life was not yet in immediate danger, they could do nothing. Moore had to wait in the hospital for her situation to deteriorate enough that doctors felt they could legally intervene.
"It was a ticking time bomb, safety-wise," Moore said. "I was just sitting there waiting for something terrible to happen. The traditional route would have been to immediately induce me once my water broke, just for my safety, and they were no longer able to do that."
Moore asked if she could do something to move things along. Walk around? Do squats? Something?
No one could offer Moore any advice, telling her that she, as well as the medical team, could be charged with murder for assisting with an abortion. "If, or when, things started to go downhill, they would go to an ethics committee to see what they could do," Moore said. "But all of the bad things they said could happen were about to happen."
On Thursday, still waiting in the hospital to go into labor or for some extremely rare chance she might carry Claire a few more weeks for her to be viable outside the womb, Moore started bleeding badly. For any woman with no health issues, the situation was dire, but Moore had preexisting conditions, including a blood-clotting disorder, making the pregnancy even more high-risk.
The morning of Friday, Oct. 18, Moore learned she was having a placental abruption, an extremely serious complication when the placenta separates from the uterine wall before birth. It wasn't until nearly 3 p.m. that afternoon that doctors made the call to administer medication to induce labor.
Claire was stillborn at 7:42 Friday evening.
"She was not alive anymore, and she was kicking me the entire time up until she was born," Moore said. The baby died during birth but Moore said she was unsure exactly when. She was in so much pain and losing so much blood, it was impossible to decipher any sequence of events.
Moore lost a tremendous amount of blood, nearly five cups, she said, if not more. Weeks after returning to her home in Fayetteville, she is still on bed rest, too weak to do almost any activity. A few days after leaving the hospital, she said she thought she was having a pulmonary embolism from possible blood clots. Fortunately, she was not.
She said she is dealing with tremendous guilt and vacillates between shock, anger and sadness. And that after this experience, she and her husband may not try to have another child.
Moore, who has two children, had already lost two previous pregnancies. She said because of abortion laws, it's just not worth going through something like this again.
"I loved that baby, and I wanted her so badly," Moore said.
Moore told the Arkansas Times that she wanted to share her story because she feels like the people who are making these laws are ignorant of their real-world implications for women, children and for men, including her husband who "was so scared."
"He's been on 15 combat missions," Moore said. "Nothing was as scary as dealing with this."
"Someone who has no medical training should not be deciding when my life is in danger," Moore said. "I needed a medical intervention to save my life; that is not the same for me as an elective abortion. I do not care which side of [politics] you are on, no one should be in the situation I was just in."
"We need to make sure the lines in the sand are clear for doctors," she said. "If we are going to say there is a caveat where the mother's safety comes first, where is that?"