Ectopic Pregnancy and the Increasing Danger to Mothers' Reproductive Health

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Margaret Ables (0:17)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell. Laughing in the face of motherhood, this is Margaret and I'm going to start today's episode with a trigger warning. Today, we are going to be discussing pregnancy loss, abortion, and maternal death. Please be advised if those topics are difficult for you, or if this is an episode you want to listen to without your kids in earshot.

Today's guest is Anne Richards. Anne is an award-winning children's creative executive with over 25 years of experience leading projects for audio, interactive, and television. She is the vice president of Audio Yo-Yo at Fablevision Studios, where she oversees a wide range of podcast series for young audiences. Some of her recent projects include Animals Do What for Audible, Dora's Mermaid Adventures for Nickelodeon, and LOC Mixtape for the Library of Congress. She also continues to work as an executive creative on interactive and television projects.

But more important than all of that extremely impressive and exciting bio, you should also know that Anne Richards is my baby sister. Welcome, Anne.

Anne Richards (1:27)

Yeah. I'm so happy to be here. I finally made it.

Margaret Ables (1:30)

I know. You are, I believe, like the third or fourth family member who has come across the What Fresh Hell podcast.

Anne Richards (1:36)

Yeah.

Margaret Ables (1:37)

You do have a storied career working in children's television and game development, but that is not what we are here to discuss today.

We are here to discuss your history with ectopic pregnancy and pregnancy loss. Yeah. And the reason I wanted to have this conversation today is that ProPublica published an article on September 9th, written by Andrea Suozzo, I believe, and Agnel Philip, which examined a sharp increase in deaths associated with ectopic pregnancies in the wake of the nationwide abortion ban. And so before we get into that larger topic, let's start with your history of pregnancy.

Anne Richards (2:22)

So I got married in 2005 As you will remember, you were there. And fairly soon there after my husband and I started trying to have kids. And I had a series of miscarriages. I had two miscarriages, I think both in 2006, they were fairly early, like five or six weeks.

And then I got pregnant a third time in early 2007 And also started showing signs of miscarriage. And I was visiting my doctor very regularly at that point because of my prior miscarriages. And I found out that I had an ectopic pregnancy, which led to what we'll talk about today.

Margaret Ables (2:57)

So you had these first two pregnancy losses. And I remember at the time, it was quickly like medical mystery. What is going on? It's very hard to know. I believe statistically, it's like 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, something around there.

Anne Richards (3:18)

Pretty common.

Margaret Ables (3:19)

Fairly common. But you were how old at the time when you were first getting pregnant?

Anne Richards (3:24)

I was 29, 30, maybe.

Margaret Ables (3:26)

So young kind of by today's standards. I mean, that wouldn't have been considered young back in the day, but you were young, healthy.

Anne Richards (3:34)

Yeah, I had no underlying conditions, nothing else that was kind of of concern at that time. But it was a mystery, as you say, like quickly medical mystery. We're trying to figure out what was going on.

Margaret Ables (3:44)

You have your first pregnancy loss, doctors say. It happens.

Anne Richards (3:48)

Exactly. This is very common. Keep at it. You'll be fine.

No need for concern at this point.

Margaret Ables (3:56)

How long between your first and second pregnancy?

Anne Richards (3:58)

To be honest, I don't recall exactly, but a couple of months, it was not, there was a period of, you're supposed to wait a month or two, we waited a month or two, and then it was fairly quick thereafter. I was not having trouble getting pregnant. That was not the issue.

Margaret Ables (4:12)

And then third pregnancy similarly, like a couple of months later, is that right?

Anne Richards (4:17)

Yeah, though in between my second and the ectopic, what would turn out to be the ectopic, I had started to do some testing and trying to figure out with my doctors what was going on. And as with many people who have pregnancy loss, there was not a lot of good information. There was not a lot of kind of, oh, it's this, and if we fix this thing, it was just, it continued to be the mystery.