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‘They’re just going to let me die?’: One Chattanooga-area woman’s abortion odyssey

Madison Underwood and her fiance, Adam Queen, before leaving on their four-hour drive across state lines and time zones to a Georgia abortion clinic, in Pikeville, Tenn., outside Chattanooga, July 4, 2022. Underwood was thrilled to learn she was pregnant, but when a rare defect in the developing fetus threatened her life, she was thrust into post-Roe chaos. (Kendrick Brinson/The New York Times)
Madison Underwood and her fiance, Adam Queen, before leaving on their four-hour drive across state lines and time zones to a Georgia abortion clinic, in Pikeville, Tenn., outside Chattanooga, July 4, 2022. Underwood was thrilled to learn she was pregnant, but when a rare defect in the developing fetus threatened her life, she was thrust into post-Roe chaos. (Kendrick Brinson/The New York Times) Madison Underwood and her fiance, Adam Queen, before leaving on their four-hour drive across state lines and time zones to a Georgia abortion clinic, in Pikeville, Tenn., outside Chattanooga, July 4, 2022. Underwood was thrilled to learn she was pregnant, but when a rare defect in the developing fetus threatened her life, she was thrust into post-Roe chaos. (Kendrick Brinson/The New York Times)

By Neelam Bohra / New York Times News Service 11 min read

CHATTANOOGA – Madison Underwood was lying on the ultrasound table, nearly 19 weeks pregnant, when the doctor came in to say her abortion had been canceled.

Nurses followed and started wiping away lukewarm sonogram gel from her exposed belly as the doctor leaned over her shoulder to speak to her fiance, Adam Queen.

She recalled that she went quiet, her body went still. What did they mean, they couldn’t do the abortion? Just two weeks earlier, she and her fiance had learned her fetus had a condition that would not allow it to survive outside the womb. If she tried to carry to term, she could become critically ill, or even die, her doctor had said. Now, she was being told she couldn’t have an abortion she didn’t even want, but needed.

“They’re just going to let me die?” she remembers wondering.

In the blur around her, she heard the doctor and nurses talking about a clinic in Georgia that could do the procedure now that the legal risks of performing it in Tennessee were too high.