‘I almost died trying to get an abortion in Iowa’—a mother of 4 speaks out

In Jess Djukanovic’s words, as told to Bonnie Fuller

I could hardly see. My vision was blurry—I felt like I was looking through a dark tunnel. I couldn’t talk and my husband had to almost carry me as I stumbled from the car into the county hospital ER.

I was having a hard time breathing—I couldn’t take a deep breath. It felt like somebody was pushing four fingers down on my chest and on the top of my heart. My skin felt like it was on fire. 

My husband, Miljan, had rushed me to the ER after a maternity nurse treating me at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics ordered me to go to the hospital ER nearest to my home in Des Moines immediately.

I was 11 weeks pregnant, and she believed that I was suffering from a very dangerous condition called “mirror syndrome,” which meant that I was experiencing the same deadly symptoms as my poor baby.

It had only been a few days before, during a sonogram, that my much-wanted baby girl was diagnosed with a rare fatal genetic condition called Trisomy 18.

The fetal maternal specialist had shown Miljan and me that our baby had developed a large sac of fluid on her spine. It was almost as big as her torso. She warned us that fluid would rapidly surround our little girl’s heart, her brain and lungs, and the fluid would enter her lungs.

I learned that most Trisomy 18 babies almost never even make it to birth—they die inside their moms. Even those that are born usually pass away within just minutes or hours.

If I had mirror syndrome, it would mean that I had fluid around my heart and lungs. The condition could be life-threatening to me, a pregnant woman, because it could cause heart failure.

When a busy OB-GYN at the county hospital came to examine me, she could see that I was visibly swollen. I had fluid under my skin and an MRI showed that I did, in fact, have fluid surrounding my heart and lungs.

My blood pressure was soaring, and protein in my urine showed that my kidneys were working overtime.

But she said there was nothing that she could do for me besides keep me for several hours and monitor my vital signs.

After all, I was pregnant—and abortion is banned after six weeks in Iowa unless it’s performed “to preserve the life of a pregnant woman or when continuation of the pregnancy will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

I wasn’t close enough to death for her to intervene and perform a D&C procedure to terminate my pregnancy. It didn’t matter that the Iowa abortion ban does have an exception allowing for an abortion if your baby has a fatal fetal anomaly.

The OB-GYN wasn’t prepared to perform what would be a very rare abortion at her hospital. She was the only OB on duty that night and two other women were in labor. She was needed to deliver their babies, not to risk a Class C felony conviction and jail for 10 years because of me.

I was scared. There was really no other nonreligious hospital with a maternity department in Des Moines that I could go to for help. Editor’s Note: Religious hospitals are notoriously unreliable when it comes to caring for pregnant women in need of help.

I feared that if I was slowly dying, there was nobody to help me in the city. Nobody.

When Miljan and I finally went home, I spoke to my mom, who had been watching our two young sons, Max, 5, and Luka, 2, as well as my 14-year-old daughter, Kamilla, while I was at the hospital.

I told my mom, “I was scared. I was really scared. If I die because of stupidity like this, I want you to know that when you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you voted for. This is what pro-life means.”

I sort of yelled at her as I was crying. I told her, “I don’t want to die because of politics.” And she was like, “I just didn’t know.”

I said, “I don’t want to ever hear you campaigning for that man ever again.”

Surprised to be pregnant at 42

Miljan and I had not been planning to have more children. We had been married for six years and had our two young sons. This was my second marriage. I married very young and I also have an older son, Robby, who is 21, as well as my teenage daughter from that marriage.

I was 42 and my IUD had been bothering me, so I had it taken out. But I was tracking my periods religiously and using ovulation strips carefully.

Last summer we had taken all the kids and both our mothers on a road trip through the Balkans and I just felt “off.” I don’t know if it’s a “woman thing,” but I decided to ask Miljan to go and buy me a pregnancy test.

When I saw that the test was positive, I just started to cry. It was a mixture of crying because I was happy but also because I was so stressed.

My 2-year-old is a crazy energetic kid and I had just finished surgery to repair my abs, which had separated after having four big babies. I’m a tiny 5’ 2” person and the pregnancies just took a toll on me. I also had a big hernia that had to be repaired.

But when I told Miljan the news, he really felt like it was a blessing.

Miljan and I had met at the World Wrestling Championships. I was on Team USA and he was on the Serbian world team. We would be training together and he was showing me how to do certain throws and we became best friends almost immediately.

I started to wrestle in my first year of high school. Someone in my history class dared the girls to go out for wrestling. I decided to take up the challenge.

But when I went to the first meeting, it was very clear that the coach did not want any girls on the team. He said there had never been another girl who had made it for a whole year.

I remember the coach even told me that he didn’t want me there, but that legally he couldn’t kick me off the team.

I decided that I liked the challenge and I felt that it was very necessary to stick around. Besides, once I tried wrestling, I liked it.

I did get beat up by guys trying to get me to quit, but I just kept coming back for more. By the end of my time there, I was voted team captain. It didn’t take that long for the coach who tried to kick me off the team to become my biggest supporter.

I landed a scholarship for the first collegiate women’s wrestling team—Missouri Valley College. Then in 2016, I was asked to join Team USA, where I won my first bronze medal in grappling. Wrestling is a form of grappling.

I was on Team USA four times, and won two bronze medals.

I’ve also been the national team coach here in Iowa for girls’ wrestling. Now I volunteer as a coach at my daughter’s middle school, where she wrestles.

Since I was a teenager, I‘ve not been afraid to put in that hard, grinding work and deal with people talking s— to you and making fun of you. I’m willing to fight the good fight.

Miljan and I were ready to fight for our baby

The first time that there was a hint that something was wrong with the baby was when I went for my ultrasound at nine weeks this past October.

My OB-GYN’s office called afterward and said that the ultrasound had not shown my baby’s spine clearly. Then, the next day my OB-GYN left a message on my voicemail saying that he had flagged something in my bloodwork and that he wanted me to see a fetal medicine specialist for a more detailed ultrasound.

He mentioned that the baby might have something called Trisomy 18, but he didn’t sound alarmed so I didn’t comprehend that something might be seriously wrong. But we also got the news that we were having a girl, and we were both so excited.

That was on a Friday. Well, I decided to start Googling what this Trisomy 18 was over the weekend and I was like, “This is not good.”

The worry set in. I knew that my doctor’s office was closed, so I actually went on a “detective dive” and found the phone number for the lab that had done my bloodwork.

I called and they were open. I was connected to a genetic counselor there. She was the one who broke the news to me that it was 97.3% positive that my baby was suffering from the fatal genetic condition of Trisomy 18.

She was very sweet but concise as she explained to me that it was highly unlikely that it would survive long enough to be born. She said that a baby with Trisomy 18 is just not very compatible with life.

While I listened to her, part of me understood what she was saying. But then another part of me thought, “Well, I’ve defied lots of odds before. What if I’m the 3%? What if the tests are wrong and our baby is the 3% and is normal?”

I guess I was in denial, but I was clinging to hope. When I told Miljan, he too was very hopeful. We have both defeated odds before. 

When we went to see the maternal fetal specialist the following Tuesday, we had an ultrasound and to us, the fetus was starting to look like a baby and she seemed fine. I thought, “Oh, I worried for nothing.”

But the doctor got right to the point. She said, “The baby’s not fine. She will probably die inside you and you will miscarry in the next four or five weeks.”

But what was going to be dangerous was that my body might not recognize that the fetus had died, and I might not miscarry in time before a dangerous sepsis infection set in—and sepsis could kill me.

Sepsis can move extremely quickly throughout the body.

I knew that I wanted to be alive for the babies I already had. What would happen to all of them if I wasn’t here? I wanted to make sure that I would be OK.

The next day, I called my OB-GYN’s office and spoke to a nurse. I asked her, “What’s next?” I needed to know how and where I could end the pregnancy, which could threaten my life.

All she told me was that I had to wait to miscarry at home. But I was like, wait, it’s 2025 in America. I refuse to believe that is my only option. I told her that I wanted to talk to her manager. But no one called me back for hours. I kept calling and leaving messages all day.

Finding out about how Iowa’s abortion ban affected me

I was really pissed in 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned. That was the first time ever that I had been vocal politically. But I was like, girls matter. You’re sending the wrong message by stripping away our rights.

If you take away abortion rights, what’s next—will you take away voting rights for women? 

When the Iowa abortion ban went into effect in July 2024, I feared the worst. But I was relieved that at least it wasn’t a total ban like in Texas, and that there were exceptions for rape, incest, and for a medically necessary reason.

But now I was learning that the law isn’t clear cut. There was so much gray zone in the way our law is written in Iowa. I felt like my situation 100% was proving that women had lost our rights in Iowa.

When the nurse manager at my OB-GYN’s office finally called me back, she said that the University of Iowa medical center could do more testing. Never once did she tell me that their facility could provide me with an abortion. I think she was too scared to advise me of that.

But I didn’t want or feel that I needed more testing after all the ultrasounds and bloodwork that I had already had. I told her that and kept asking if the University of Iowa hospital would provide an abortion.

Finally, she admitted that she thought they did “the procedure” there and again, after much pressing, she agreed to contact the maternity medical center there and get me an appointment for the following week.

It was the only health care facility in the state that could provide a legal “medically necessary” abortion in Iowa.

It was an hour and 40-minute drive from Des Moines to Iowa City. When I finally saw a doctor at the hospital’s maternal care clinic, she was very sweet but explained that my baby was “actively dying.” She put her hand on my lap and asked, “What do you want?”

I just started crying because no medical person until then had asked me what I wanted. It had felt like I didn’t matter.

I told her, “I want to stay alive.”

She said, okay, we can perform a D&C on you and ensure that all the fetal tissue and placenta is out of you. We can make sure that you’re okay.

She was compassionate and explained how the procedure worked. She said it was their mission at the clinic to “preserve life” and that meant preserving the life of the mother.

I was so relieved, especially because the pregnancy was already affecting my health. I had gone to the hospital ER just two days before because I was so dizzy I couldn’t drive my kids to school.

I also had the worst headache and felt like a drunk person. It was bizarre.

It was now a Wednesday and the abortion was scheduled for the following Monday. But by Friday, that’s when I got so sick that my husband practically had to carry me into the ER and I learned that I was suffering from mirror syndrome.

It was a very scary weekend while I waited for the abortion.

There was a sense of sadness before the procedure

Miljan and I drove to Iowa City on the Sunday evening before the appointment.

My husband was so relieved that I was going to get the procedure. He had been so afraid when I could barely walk or stay conscious the Friday evening before when he had to rush me to the hospital.

He truly believed my life was endangered when the doctor at the hospital in Des Moines couldn’t help me. He felt like she had been more worried that she’d be sued than about taking care of my health. He said it was like she had washed her hands of me.

However, at the University of Iowa clinic, the abortion turned out to be the most peaceful medical experience I have ever had. Everyone was super professional and caring.

Right before the termination, they even had a priest come in to say a prayer over us and bless the baby. It was the best case scenario that anybody could ask for in that situation.

The doctor who performed the abortion was just exceptional.

Just before the procedure, there was a sense of sadness among the medical providers in the surgical room. It wasn’t like they were excited to do an abortion. They are about saving lives. They knew the gravity that came with having to end a life to save me.

It was a very sad situation for Miljan and me after the termination. We were losing the baby girl we had been so excited to have. But until I had the termination, we had no rest. We didn’t have time to grieve.

We never got time to process the fact that we were losing a baby because we were fighting for my life.

Grief came later, once the fight was done.

When I went to bed that night after the procedure I was still crampy, but when I woke up the next day, I felt like a million dollars. I had energy. I was alive again.

But I also had this enormous amount of guilt, because I was so relieved not to be carrying a fetus that was making me so sick. I wouldn’t wish this rollercoaster of emotions on my worst enemy.

You’re happy to be OK and alive but also deeply, deeply sad in your core, in your soul that you had to end your baby. You have this emptiness. You were pregnant and now all of a sudden, you’re not.

And your hormones are going through a postpartum period with no baby. Your body is a disaster. You’re hopeful, like maybe we’ll try again and that baby will be fine and then you’re like, “Am I crazy?”

Miljan and I aren’t sure yet about whether we will try for another baby. We’re 50/50. Losing the baby leaves a hole in your heart. Miljan says that if I want another baby, he’s along for the ride.

But, “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to put you in danger again.”

After the abortion, I was still upset about my OB-GYN’s office refusing to tell me that I could get an abortion in Iowa City and instead instructing me that I just had to wait and miscarry at home.

And this was after they learned that my baby had Trisomy 18. Yet it took hours and hours and multiple calls and messages from me before they called me back.

So two days after the termination, I called the office and asked for a meeting.

When we sat down to talk, I met the nurse manager, a doctor, and the office manager. They apologized multiple times and agreed to compile a list of abortion health care information and resources that they could provide to other patients in need.

That was some progress, but I wanted to do more for other women and girls in Iowa.

My daughter’s future—her rights motivate me.

My daughter has really been my most motivating factor. But I’m also speaking out on behalf of all the other girls in wrestling that I’ve coached and mentored over the years.

Something in the law has to change before they are ready to have babies. I want them to have full autonomy over their own bodies again.

Is that too much to ask? Access to the health care they need, in America, the land of the free.

Men have it.

What if a male Republican senator gets cancer and you’re like, “You can’t get treatment because it’s interfering with God’s will.”

There’s not a single law that prevents men from getting the health care they need. Not one.

But I’m starting small and working to get amendments to the current abortion law. I think that’s the way I can help save women’s lives now.

I contacted Iowa Sen. Kara Warme, who is the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. Even though she’s a Republican, she has been very responsive in listening to what I’d like to see changed about the law.

Today, there’s a big gray area in the abortion law. The politicians didn’t consult medical professionals when they wrote it.

I’d like there to be more clarity about when doctors can provide an abortion. Right now it says an abortion can only be done when there is a “medical emergency” to “preserve the life of the mother.”

Shouldn’t the law allow medical providers to do an abortion before a woman needs to be in the ICU getting urgent care? We are a very rural state. It can take a long time to reach a hospital. Women should be able to get abortion care in a very timely way.

Also, once you have a diagnosis that you are carrying a baby with a fatal diagnosis, like I had, you should be able to get an abortion easily and at many hospitals in Iowa, not just one.

I will also be focused on voting for Democratic politicians who will support amending the law. We have a pretty solid Democratic candidate for governor, Rob Sand, and I will also pay attention to voting for local legislators.

Editor’s note: Rob Sand has promised to protect women’s reproductive rights and has warned that Republican lawmakers in Iowa want to go after access to contraception and IVF.

I’ve also been speaking a lot about my experience on Facebook, where I have 5,000 followers.

A lot of people know me in Iowa because of my leadership in building up girls wrestling as a sport. They know that if I have taken a stance, it’s because Jess means business.

It was so mindblowing to me that a woman in America, in Iowa in 2025, couldn’t get proper health care because of politics. It’s an injustice.

There is something about injustice that always lights a fire in my chest. Even if a kid is being bullied or marginalized—I can’t stand it and I will speak up about it.

I decided that I have to speak up about how everyone needed to have access to the choice to have an abortion. For me, it was a hard choice but the right choice.

People who have read my posts have been fantastic. Several conservative people have commented and said, “I had no idea that this is what the law meant. Thank you for letting me know.”

Or some have straight up said: “I’m an ultra pro-life Christian conservative. Thank you for sharing your story because this has changed how I will vote in the future.”

I feel like I can continue to speak up about this in a very real way that can make people understand the gravity of the situation. And that it could be their wife or their daughter, their sister or co-worker.

The reactions that I’ve had so far to speaking out have inspired and motivated me. If I have changed the minds of 100 people in the last couple of weeks, what if I can change the way 1,000 people vote in the future? That’s worth it.