A Tennessee woman needed an abortion to save her life. She then joined a lawsuit against the state’s ban

“It made a terrible situation so much worse,” Fulton said. “I had no good options. I at least wanted the least-bad option to be with a doctor who has already seen me and is familiar with my medical history and I can go back to see for a follow-up appointment.”

She also wanted to be able to recover at home, near friends and family. She was left feeling a callous disregard for her life: “Some people that are making some decisions just didn’t care whether I lived or died in this situation.”

The Fultons first drove about eight hours to St Louis, Missouri, to stay with family; then Rachel and her husband drove another two or three hours to Illinois for the abortion. “I was just so, so grateful that I could give my son a huge, huge hug after all of that,” she said.

When she learned about a lawsuit from the Center for Reproductive Rights, she contacted them for updates on the case – and ended up joining as a plaintiff.

“If I could stop people from being in the medical position that I was in, I would, but I can’t,” Fulton said. “Whenever I do anything with this case, as hard as it is, I am doing it to help other people and I’m doing it for Titus,” she said. “For me, this is the Titus Fulton memorial court case.”

The patient plaintiffs “were all injured by being denied medical care”, Goldstein said. Four of them were diagnosed with lethal fetal diagnoses which were dangerous to their own health, and two of them developed very serious infections because reproductive healthcare was denied.

“What the state is trying to do by this delay is prevent these women from telling their story in court,” Goldstein said. “The state wants to convince the people of Tennessee that the abortion ban is working and that women who need medically necessary abortion care are getting it. And what women in our case prove, and what the state is very afraid of coming to light, is that it’s not working. Women are being denied care, they’re getting infected, they’re going septic, and this is all because doctors are terrified to provide standard medical treatment that they used to provide to their patients before the ban went into effect.”

The attorney general of Tennessee, Jonathan Skrmetti, told the Guardian in a statement that “there’s nothing unusual about appealing an appealable order”, adding that he believes “the Tennessee judiciary can resolve the legal issues here without a trial. If we’re wrong about that, we’re fully prepared to try this case.”

The plaintiffs plan to fight the appeal.

“It’s been a long time waiting for this, to have the rug pulled out from under us now,” Fulton said. “I’m just hoping I still get my day in court, I get to tell my story, I get to speak for other women, other families, in situations like ours.”

The longer the trial is delayed, the more families have to go through pain like theirs, she said.