Dani Mathisen was living in Texas and married to her high school sweetheart. She was thrilled to learn she was pregnant with a baby girl. But at 20 weeks, a fetal anatomy scan revealed devastating news. Her daughter only had one kidney, her spine was so bent that it put pressure on her heart and her brain was formed incorrectly.
The condition was diagnosed as lethal, but under a Texas law imposed just weeks before Mathisen’s scans, abortion was banned at six weeks with no provisions for rape, incest or severe fetal abnormalities, like Dani’s case.