This Is What An Unintended Pregnancy Is Really Like

This week, Fusion published Fertile Ground, “an interactive journey through an unintended pregnancy.” The Choose Your Own Adventure-type site places you in the shoes of a young woman in South Dakota — one of the most restrictive states in the country — who's dealing with the fact that the condom broke the night before. Now she (you) is about to make a series of important decisions. Each scenario presents its own set of choices, leading you down a road flooded with unique obstacles. Want to go to Planned Parenthood? It closed down three days ago, due to lack of funding. Want to get Plan B? State law allows pharmacies to dispense the drug at their discretion, and the grandfatherly pharmacist just lied and told you it's out of stock. Should you choose to wait until you can take a pregnancy test, securing an abortion is even more difficult. South Dakota only has a small handful of clinics offering the procedure, and the state also imposes a 72-hour waiting period on abortions, starting from the time of your first appointment (and excluding holidays and weekends). So, you have to either drive back and forth each time or stay overnight, with both options costing you a lot of money. Not to mention you will have to miss multiple days of work, risking your employment status. What do you do next? Fertile Ground does an excellent job of walking you through the difficulties of accessing birth control and securing an abortion procedure. As the obstacles start to build up, it’s hard not to become stressed, panicked, and depressed — both on behalf of the avatar and in response to the current state of reproductive rights. Restricted access to health care is not breaking news, but hopefully Fertile Ground will shed some vital (and moving) light on the struggle, for those who are still unaware.