Amy | Tara | Tikea | April | Janet | Nikki

 

Amy was a streetwise 17-year-old mother from West Philadelphia. She had been living with her grandmother for the last three years because her mother was in prison, but their relationship was strained. Her toddler lived with his other grandmother. When she became pregnant again, Amy knew that she could not get an abortion with her medical card. She had no way of raising hundreds of dollars for an abortion.

In desperation, Amy drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol, thinking it would cause a miscarriage. She was taken to the burn unit of a nearby hospital. While still in intensive care, Amy said that she would try again to self-abort as soon as she got out of the hospital, and would do whatever it took, no matter how self-destructive. Although privately sympathetic, no doctor at the Catholic hospital would sign for her to have an abortion under Pennsylvania's "life-threat" exception to the Medicaid abortion ban. A nurse on the night shift put her in touch with the Greater Philadelphia Women's Medical Fund, which paid the full fee for Amy's early abortion.