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Karla kept a pair of hospital socks that her all-female care team had put on her following the abortion. To her, the socks symbolized the care that the team had given her throughout the procedure.

Max Posner/NPR

Karla and Sam Renée were told that theirs was a severe case. "She really couldn't have had more of that [chromosomal] arm deleted – they told us they could barely find any of it at all," Karla says. Their doctors and genetic counselors emphasized that the couple should expect severe symptoms, but weren't able to say exactly what they would be.

"We didn't know if she could use her legs – we never felt her kick, not even once," Karla says. "She could have needed surgery on her organs. There [were] indications that she might have needed surgery on her jaw just to be able to eat. We didn't know if she'd be able to speak."

A follow-up ultrasound had also shown the incre a type of cyst at the neck that can increase the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth, along with with heart and skeletal problems.

If she did survive, they wondered what kind of life she would have. "I saw some people on YouTube had kind of a similar disorder – something adjacent," Sam says. "I did find one person with a mild case, but it still left so much uncertainty."

They looked into social services in their area but weren't confident they would be able to get what they needed. "If we couldn't even be assured that there were support services for her or for families like ours, what's going to happen when she gets older and when we're gone?" Karla says.

"When you combine all of those physical and mental and emotional pieces together, I couldn't ask my daughter to walk that path – it's too much," she says. "I felt it would be selfish to ask her to stay and to go through all that, just for us to be parents."

Karla recalls "thrashing and flailing in the face of this decision we didn't want to have to make. We wanted to go buy onesies and make a nursery, but instead, we had to think through this."

After several sleepless nights, Karla and Sam decided to end their pregnancy.

Making that decision is "an immense responsibility that I feel is rightfully mine," Karla says. "I'm the one who has to live with this. I'm the one who has to make the call."

Although the North Carolina law banning abortion after 20 weeks was still in legal limbo, the hospital scrambled to get her in — and were able to schedule the abortion at 19 weeks, 6 days.

The policy debate: In North Carolina, the gestational age limit may not be 20 weeks for much longer. The North Carolina legislature is Republican-controlled and the senate leaderhas said he supports a 12- to 15-week ban. The speaker of the house, has said he supports a ban closer to six weeks. (Neither Moore or Berger granted NPR's request for an interview on abortion limits for this story.)

At the federal level, Lindsey Graham, the senior Republican senator from neighboring South Carolina, has drafted a At that stage of pregnancy, some cases of serious fetal anomalies could not be detected yet in testing.

And there are very few exceptions in state abortion laws for fetal anomalies, even lethal ones.

All states that have near-total or six-week abortion bans include an exception for when the pregnant person's life is in danger, according to  a state policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute. A few states allo