It was 11.27pm on Wednesday, November 5, at my home in Vancouver, Washington, when I turned to my partner and stated dramatically, albeit not inconceivably: “I may be facing my own untimely death.”

After years of reporting, writing and producing for several major broadcast news organisations in Australia and the US, it dawned on me that I had “become the story”. As I watched the denouement of a dizzying inundation of red and blue map graphics on election day, I was struck by my casting as the protagonist of a grim storyline.

Amy La Porte, an Australian-American journalist living in Washington State, is planning to have a baby in America.

Next week, I will undergo elective surgery to remove scar tissue from my cervix and uterus, a necessary procedure if I am to bear a child. I will then begin a monthly cycle of fertility pills and injections. I am striving to conceive a child, but at the same time, I am also pursuing my own method of aborting a fetus. This dichotomous pursuit may save my life.

I am 38. I’m among the growing number of working women waiting to have a child. However, with a staggering one in four pregnancies ending in miscarriage, and as mine will be classified as a “geriatric pregnancy”, my chance of miscarrying or carrying a fetus with congenital abnormalities is higher than most. As if it were not traumatic enough to miscarry, often a woman will experience an incomplete miscarriage whereby part of the fetus remains. This can lead to fatal sepsis, a medical emergency that........

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