Emily found out when she was around 22 weeks pregnant that her unborn son didn’t have kidneys, and his lungs wouldn’t develop.
If her baby survived the pregnancy, he would be born unable to breathe, and would die a few hours later.
Emily had a crushing decision to make: continue to carry a baby who would not survive, which could be a risk to her health and having children in the future, or have an abortion.
“I don’t think I stopped crying for an entire two weeks,” said Emily, who asked WBEZ not to use her real name to protect her privacy and safety. “The whole world felt heavy. … It’s not something anybody should have to go through. It’s not easy losing somebody you love.”
Emily said doctors told her her life wasn’t in immediate danger, but they also pointed out the risks. Emily’s family has a history of hemorrhaging. If she started to bleed, doctors said she might lose her uterus, too. Emily said this was devastating. She’s a young mom who said she wants more children.
“It was really scary,” Emily recalled. “The doctors told me the baby could die tomorrow. He could die next week. But it’s very unlikely that he’ll make it full term.”
She chose to get an abortion. She said her doctors told her it was the safest option — but they wouldn’t provide one.
She lives in Missouri, which has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. So Emily had to leave and found her way across the border to Illinois, a haven for abortion rights.
...
Emily made her way to Dr. Laura Laursen, an OB-GYN at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, in May. The number of out-of-state abortions at Rush has quadrupled since Roe was overturned.
Laursen received Emily’s consent to discuss her case with WBEZ. She remembers Emily was frustrated about having to jump through so many hoops to get the abortion, and she was stressed about the cost of being in a hospital.
The biggest thing was just making space for her to express those emotions,” Laursen said. “Making sure that she felt comfortable with all the decisions she was making. And trying to make her feel as empowered as possible.”
Emily’s life wasn’t in immediate danger, but it was safer for her to have an abortion than remain pregnant, Laursen said. She added just what qualifies as an immediate danger is really hard for physicians to figure out.
“I’m constantly hearing stories from my partners across the country of trying to figure out what counts as imminent danger,” Laursen said. “We’re trying to prevent danger. We’re not trying to get to the point where someone’s an emergency.”
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okay so picture this.
You're a man named Jim Steinman. You are one of the most prolific songwriters of the 80s. In your spirit, output and essence, you are eternally popping a wheelie on a motorcycle while a hot half-naked woman clings to you and bats wheel in the sky above.
You wrote a song in which Meatloaf plays a hideously disfigured hunk who steals a nubile lady back to his crumbling manor and introduces her to the pleasures of magic lesbian group sex.
You wrote a song in which Celine Dion sings as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, dancing with Cathy's corpse on a beach in the moonlight; a scene which you, Jim Steinman, believe should have been in the book. (The moors of Wuthering Heights are landlocked, but you, Jim Steinman, are too fucking real to care about that.)
You wrote the song for the opening scene of the movie Streets of Fire, in which evil leatherdaddy Willem Dafoe leads his malefic motorcycle crew into a concert to abduct Diane Lane while she's wearing a skintight satin jumpsuit.
You wrote a song in which Bonnie Tyler wanders a haunted boarding school as literal demon twinks gyrate at her out of the fog.
There is no peak of goth camp that you, Jim Steinman, have not summited, no horny energy you have not tapped. They say that Alexander the Great wept when he saw there were no more worlds to conquer. But you, Jim Steinman, are not Alexander the Great. You, Jim Steinman, are better. You, Jim Steinman, have vision.
You take your most successful song, the song everyone knows, the most big-haired, white dress, gothic arches, doves flying, possessed choir boys chanting, bombastic song you have, and think: what if this, but with vampires.
And so you change the lyrics to be about death and infinity and a powerful bloodsucking lord seducing a girl who is ALL ABOUT IT, and then toss off a whole musical for this song to be the centerpiece to, and the musical is bad but it's also a weird hit that's been staged in fourteen countries and revived seven times, because nothing has ever whipped as campily, as ridiculously, as perfectly as this:
It never takes off in America. A prophet is without honor in his own land. But that doesn't matter. How could it matter? You are perhaps the most creatively self-actualized man who has ever lived. Look at that vampire. He's coming in hot and a hundred Venetian nuns gave their lives to make his ludicrously capacious lace sleeves. Look at that girl. She was born in a fog machine. She wore her best red velvet cape. She's down bad. She's singing Total Eclipse of the Heart the whole time.
You are Jim Steinman, and you have reached apotheosis.
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Alastor and Lucifer having a legit musical battle over who's a better father to Charlie is something I never dared to hope for, right along with a little hint that Alastor doesn't actually think of the hotel as fighting for a lost cause, so thank you episode 5, I will be replaying you frequently
Episode 6, you hit me with so many levels of whiplash I don't know if I'll be recovered by next week
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Charlie: "About this meeting. Please don't be mean about Emily's co-worker dying..."
Vaggie: "What makes you think I'd be mean about it?"
Charlie: "Vaggie. Your adorable evil grin is showing."
Vaggie: "What grin?" >:D
Emily: "Charlie, hello!!!"
Charlie: "Emily~! Thank you SO much for coming all this way!"
Emily: "Oh don't thank me, I'm happy to meet up with you again anytime. I'm just glad you're ok! Alive, in on piece, still perfectly huggable- And you too, Vaggie!"
Vaggie: "Yeah great." (at Charlie) "tell her tell her Now."
Emily: "Tell me what?"
Charlie: "We-ell... It's, kinda about Adam..."
Emily: "Is he dead?"
Vaggie: "Very."
Charlie: "T-there might have been a SMALL amount of dying-"
Vaggie: "He's very dead. We checked. A lot."
Charlie: "Vaggie-"
Vaggie: "With spears."
Charlie: "Vaggiiieee noooo..."
Emily: "What happened?"
Vaggie: "The next best thing to me killing him."
Charlie: "WHICH SHE DIDN'T! But. Um. Somebody else did."
Emily: "Oh. Did anyone... record it?"
Vaggie: "...."
Charlie: "...."
Vaggie: "Charlie. Can we keep her."
Charlie: "Not if you ask me with an even worse evil grin like that no we can't."
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corrupt business man and child murderer what more could u want in a duo
i want william to be the nervous one and i want henry to be a FREAK!!! we need a CHANGE in the henry and william dynamic!!!!
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Just wanted to say that you're the first person I've seen draw Alastor the way he should've been designed (ex: curly hair, darker skin, and more deer attributes etc.) Also your art style is very pleasant :D
"the way he should've been designed" might be too much, but I'm still very flattered! Thank you
Honestly, I wouldn't have much issue with Alastor not having "black/poc attributes" since he's mixed, but eh.
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In fact I need you to know it was all true. The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That's the terrifying part.
Know My Name, Chanel Miller
Chanel Miller is also known as Emily Doe from the Stanford University sexual assault case.
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