A 45-year-old Louisiana woman was forced to travel out-of-state for an abortion nearly 2,000 miles from her home.
Victoria asked CNN to withhold her name because she feared for her safety and her family's safety.
The 45-year-old woman said she realized she was five weeks pregnant in a state with a ban on essentially all abortions.
"It was probably one of the hardest things I've had to go through, from the moment of discovering that I was pregnant at age 45 to actually having to have to take time off work, travel across the country, do a meeting with a doctor, and then take the pills and then skedaddle back home and then go to work like nothing had happened," Victoria recalled.
She said she picked Oregon because states neighboring Louisiana also had restrictive abortion laws.
"Once I saw that Oregon was so, so protective of reproductive rights, I said, 'Why would I think about going anywhere else?'" she remarked. "The second I got the definitive pregnancy result, I was like, 'OK, let's book a flight to Oregon. When can we do this?'"
Victoria was lucky enough to have an understanding boss who allowed her to work remotely for two days.
"She was the only person I actually kind of broke down and cried for," Victoria noted. "I think it's because I had been holding it back all week, and telling her was sort of the last thing that I needed to get in place before I could do everything."
Oregon allows abortions via telehealth, but only if the patient is in the state.
Victoria took two abortion medications — mifepristone, and misoprostol — before boarding a flight home.
"It was like a heavy period," she explained. "I took some Aleve, had to get some extra jumbo pads, and I bled a lot on the flights home, but it was fine."
"I had this feeling that I should be having some kind of deep, psychological moment of reckoning or something, but I didn't really feel that," she added. "I've never wanted to have a kid. I wasn't torn about this decision."
