Black mom got abortion due to medical trauma, cost, mental health

Dr. Kanika Harris chose to have an abortion when she learned her pregnancy was potentially deadly at 8 weeks.
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Harris was nursing her twins and caring for her son at the time of her abortion.
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She said medical trauma during her twins’ birth, mental health, and finances played a role in her decision. 

Kanika Harris wanted another baby.

After Harris gave birth to twins, she struggled with postpartum depression and mood disorders, which left her in a near-constant haze. She said she barely remembers the twins’ first year of life, so she longed for a do-over with another pregnancy.

But at eight weeks, doctors told Harris, who was 41 at the time, that giving birth was so high-risk she could die, due to an extremely thin uterine lining, previous miscarriage, and her history of high blood pressure. She talked with her husband and made the decision to get an abortion.

Harris, a medical doctor and director of Maternal and Child Health at the Black Women’s Health Imperative, said medical trauma during previous pregnancies, subsequent mental-health struggles, a history of high blood pressure and preeclampsia that made the pregnancy high-risk, and financial burdens factored into her decision to terminate the pregnancy she wished she could keep.

“I just didn’t want to look at my husband and my three children and leave them behind,” Harris said.

Throughout pregnancy, motherhood, and her work as a doctor and birth doula, Harris has advocated for Black women who face neglect in maternal healthcare. In the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die than white women during pregnancy, childbirth, or right after giving birth.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped the federal right to seek an abortion, Harris decided to talk about her life-saving one on CNN.

“That’s a really is important part of this work, making sure that people understand the complex reasons people decide to have abortions and that abortion is maternal healthcare,” Harris told Insider.

A year before her abortion, Harris gave birth to twins. She said it was a ‘traumatic experience’nce’

In 2019, Harris got pregnant with twins. She only had one son at the time and was excited to welcome two more children into the family, after miscarrying another set of twins in 2010.

But that joyous moment was punctuated with a hospital birth experience that left Harris feeling out of control, depressed, and disconnected.

Harris said the anesthesiologist in charge of her epidural tried and failed to insert the needle six times, causing her intense pain.

“Even though I was yelling and screaming and pleading and asking her to stop, the nurses around me were holding me. They were in tears. I was in tears because it was like I had no bodily autonomy over what she was doing,” Harris said.

After having the babies, Harris said she was diagnosed with a perinatal mood disorder and postpartum depression, which left her feeling lonely and irritated. Sometimes, the mental burden was so extreme, Harris would fall into emotional outbursts that required her husband, friends, or family to rush to her side and help her calm down.

“Because I’m such a high-functioning individual, no one really knew how much I was suffering,” Harris said.

While nursing her twins through postpartum depression, Harris learned she was pregnant again. Doctors previously warned Harris against becoming pregnant again due to the health risks, so she made the painstaking decision to end the pregnancy.

Though Harris still wonders what life would be like with a fourth baby, she stands firm in her decision to end that pregnancy.

The mental and financial burdens of a 4th child were too much, Harris said

Harris physically survived her high-risk pregnancy, but risking her life for a fourth child, when she already knew the mental, physical, and financial precarities of the situation, didn’t seem feasible or fair to her family, she said.

Childcare for her three children would often cost $3,000 per month, which was more than her mortgage. Since her consultant work at the time didn’t provide paid time off, Harris and her husband had no choice but to work to meet their family’s needs.

After the mental toll of her own pregnancy, and advocating for other Black women in similar situations, Harris sees abortion as a necessity.

“This whole thing is so triggering for us, the mental health toll, the financial toll, the loss of opportunities for Black women to live out their full potential,” she said.

“There’s so much we have not figured out for Black women to be able to thrive in this country and have children.”