i am a married woman with one child. my husband and i wanted to have more children. we were trying to conceive and were thrilled when i became pregnant with identical twins. our excitement turned to fear as we learned we had monodi twins – these are rare identical twins that share the same placenta. we were told from the beginning there was only a 10% chance the babies would be born alive and healthy. at this point, my husband and i had some serious discussions and decided that we would do everything in our power to save the twins, as long as my life was not in danger and i could have children again if the babies did not make it. i was incredibly sick from the beginning and could barely get out of bed, but i stayed strong because i wanted these babies so badly. i had doctors appointments every week to check on their growth. around 15 weeks, the doctors discovered the twins had developed twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (ttts). this occurs when the blood vessels of the two babies grow together in the placenta and they pass blood back and forth. basically, one twin began to grow more and the other was not developing. i was sent to mayo clinic to have an emergency fetoscopic laser surgery. they went into my uterus through a hole in my belly and used a laser to separate the blood vessels of the babies. the surgery was a success, but the next day my water broke. the babies were still alive, but due to the blood pressure imbalance caused by the ttts, the larger baby was having heart problems and the smaller baby likely had brain damage. i was also told that there was a chance i could go septic because my water broke and we had to monitor my blood pressure and temperature to make sure i wasn’t getting sick. if the babies made it, i would be hospitalized in a few weeks and monitored 24/7 until i gave birth. we still held on to hope. at my next appointment, we found out the larger baby had died. the smaller baby still had a heartbeat but its organs were not developing. we had tried everything we could to save them, and now i was carrying one dead baby and one brain dead baby without a liver. i also began to bleed. the doctors recommended that i abort the pregnancy before i became septic which could kill me, at worst, or i could lose my uterus, at best, and never have another chance to have more children. i had to make the most horrible decision to save myself and my reproductive organs over the baby i wanted so badly but was unlikely to live anyway. and it got worse – i was on medicaid at the time and the procedure was not covered because the other baby still had a heartbeat. i could not afford to have the procedure done at the hospital, which was $10,000+. the only way medicaid would pay for it was if i started to die. so i went to planned parenthood for the d&e procedure to remove the babies. it was the most horrible day of my life. i would have done anything to save those babies, but i didn’t want to risk my life for a baby that had no chance of being born healthy. i am so incredibly grateful there were people who helped me through this impossible situation when the government was preventing me for getting the care i needed. right now i am pregnant again with a healthy child, who would not have had a chance to exist if it weren’t for my abortion.