CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – “Hi Allie, Miley has been cremated today and I will be mailing her by USPS. … Please let me know when she is safe with you when she arrives,” said a text message sent Wednesday from a Connecticut funeral home director to a grieving Clarksville mom.
In mid-February, Allie Phillips, 28, learned details about her pregnancy that no parent wants to hear: Her daughter, Miley Rose, had developed several untreatable abnormalities in the womb, and was deemed not compatible with life by Tennessee doctors.
“She (the ultrasound technician) said, ‘Actually, I need to go grab your doctor real fast,'” Phillips told Clarksville Now as she recalled the day she went in for what was supposed to be a routine sonogram.
“Bryan (Phillips’ husband) kind of dagger-eyed her and was like, ‘You look like you’re about to cry,'” Phillips said. “She was just like, ‘I’ve seen some pretty serious things, and I don’t want anyone to get bad news.'”
Phillips’ OBGYN told her there appeared to be abnormalities in Miley’s development and sent her to a high-risk pregnancy doctor for further testing.
They then found out the situation was worse than they feared. The doctor said Miley had little to no amniotic fluid, and her kidneys, bladder and stomach had developed abnormally. Her heart only had two chambers instead of four, and she had a very rare brain defect called semilobar holoprosencephaly, HPE for short.
Abortion law in Tennessee
“The doctor said, ‘Well, you have a couple of options. If you decide you can terminate, unfortunately, with Tennessee law, I can’t give you any resources for here. That would be something you would have to find out-of-state care for,'” Phillips tearfully recalled. “She said, ‘Or, if you decide to continue your pregnancy, you’re putting yourself at risk for a miscarriage or a still birth. If she happened to make it through birth … we would have hospice care set up immediately for her.'”
Abortion is now banned in Tennessee with limited exceptions. According to Tennessee law, a pregnancy can be terminated only if it is to save the pregnant person’s life or preserve the pregnant person’s health.
Under that law, Phillips would have had to wait until Miley was already dead to have her removed from her body. Or, if she did not miscarry, carry Miley to full term. Miley would then have a year to live at most, unable to breathe on her own, require a feeding tube, and have seizures until she passed.
With the doctor’s diagnoses and findings, Allie and Bryan asked a hard question: If they waited, how long would Miley have? The doctor’s answer was, “The longer she’s actually in your body, the worse she is going to get.”
“I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, like I was having a nightmare,” Phillips said.
Trip to New York clinic
When Allie and her husband came to the conclusion that terminating the pregnancy was the best option for their family and Miley, they quickly researched for states that did not have abortion bans. With assisted efforts from her mother, Phillips found a clinic in the heart of New York that would be able to help.
But neither Phillips or her husband were prepared for the financial strain this trip would cause.
“I hate asking anybody for anything. I am a giver – that’s my love language,” Phillips said. “I would buy you a million gifts before I accepted one from you.”
Phillips, who has garnered a social media following on TikTok of almost 300,000 followers, received an outpouring of support from many who offered to help pay for her travel and lodging expenses.
Allie and Bryan were able to make the trip to New York, and the next day, Phillips went in for her appointment. Phillips said the clinic was discreet, and they only allowed patients, so her husband had to wait behind.
No heartbeat to be found
She was received by medical staff and taken back for a mandatory sonogram. About 30 seconds into the ultrasound, the technician’s demeanor changed and she began cautiously asking Phillips questions about her last sonogram almost a week and a half prior.
“She said, ‘Was there a heartbeat?’ And I said ‘Yeah, she had a heartbeat. I got a bunny with her heartbeat in it.’ … I didn’t realize that she was asking to lead into something. I thought she was asking some basic questions. So she was like, ‘OK,’ and her voice dragged, and her face kind of went down, and she took the sonogram thing off. And I was like, ‘Is there not a heartbeat?'” Phillips shakily recalled.
“She was like, ‘No, I’m so sorry, but no, there’s not,'” Phillips said. “And I was like, ‘So, she’s not moving?’ And she said no.'”
Phillips began to cry as she realized that at some point over the last week and a half, she had lost her baby. The technician tried to comfort her, continuously apologizing to her. “She said, ‘I’ve never had to tell somebody that. I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’ve never had to tell somebody that there wasn’t a heartbeat.’ And she actually started crying, too, and asked if she could hug me.”
Phillips met with the doctor a few minutes later, who reassured her that she had done nothing wrong and there wasn’t anything she could have done differently, encouraging Phillips not to blame herself.
“He said that because her last confirmed heartbeat was over a week ago that you had about a two-week window before you are subjected to blood clots, infections, among other things. So, knowing that she is deceased, we are going to try doing the procedure today,” Phillips said.
After the procedure, Miley’s body was handed over to a Connecticut funeral home director, and the couple returned to Clarksville.
The remains were later sent to their home, packaged with a teddy bear so that Miley wouldn’t be alone.