Anita Chabria: She loved her baby. But at six months she needed an abortion
The quiet told Michelle Mitchenor something was wrong.
Feet up, belly exposed, the actress was in an Atlanta obstetrician's office in 2022 for a routine ultrasound as she neared her fifth month of pregnancy.
But the technician wasn't saying anything as she ran the probe across Mitchenor's womb, sound waves bouncing off the fetus to create a fuzzy black-and-white image on the monitor.
What's going on? Mitchenor remembers thinking. Why are you silent?
"Then doctor came in, and immediately was like, 'Hey, so what we have found is that your baby's kidneys just did not properly, well, they didn't properly form,'" Mitchenor told me recently, sharing one of the most painful moments of her life.
Her unborn child, she was told, had bilateral multicystic dysplastic kidney, or MCDK, leaving her with bunches of cysts where kidneys were supposed to be.
Without functioning kidneys, the fetus was unable to produce urine, which forms the amniotic fluid.
Without amniotic fluid to push in and out of her lungs, they were failing to develop. The walls of Mitchenor's uterus instead pressed in as the baby struggled to move, to breathe and grow — impeding bones from maturing and smashing down on the umbilical cord that
