For People With Disabilities, Losing Abortion Access Can Be a Matter of Life or Death

These days, Flora Ellis’s mother keeps a stash of morning-after pills in a closet in their Oklahoma home. That’s not just because she’s a “cool mom,” although Ellis, 20, confirms that she is. It’s because Ellis was born with a connective-tissue disorder that prevents her body from properly making collagen. In addition to limiting her mobility and contributing to frequent injuries, Ellis’s condition means that pregnancy comes with a chance of organ rupture. Now that abortion is banned in Oklahoma, neither Ellis nor her mother want to take chances. Ellis’s health issues prevent her from using some forms of birth control, so the trove of morning-after pills serves as an extra insurance policy. “It makes me feel very unsafe that I might have less access [to abortion] now,” Ellis says. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Morgan LiebermanCynthia Rogers, Ellis’s mother, looks through the medicine cabinet in her home to find the morning-after pills she keeps for Ellis and her friends in case of emergencies. Morgan LiebermanEllis with her boyfriend, Guthrie. The two briefly lived together, but Ellis recently moved back home while she attends college. Morgan LiebermanEllis and her family in front of their house. She often uses a wheelchair due to her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. “If there’s a brace for something on your body, I probably have it,” Ellis says. The fall of Roe v. Wade, and the subseq...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized abortion healthscienceclimate Source Type: news