A pregnant cancer patient who refused an abortion despite her diagnosis a year ago has now been told she has weeks to live.
Tasha Kann, 30, was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child when she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma grade III.
Despite her doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy so she could receive chemotherapy and radiation, Kann refused.
“I definitely didn’t tell them,” Kann told Fox News Digital. “I was a little scared, but I never lost hope,” Kann said of her diagnosis. “I knew I had to be strong for my baby.”
Initially given just eight months to live, she defied the odds and welcomed a healthy baby girl into the world.
Despite only having a few weeks to live, she stands by her decision and cherishes every moment with her two children.
Tasha Kann, 30, was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child when she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer called anaplastic astrocytoma grade III.
Kann, pictured here with her husband, refused doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy so she could receive chemotherapy and radiation
Kann gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Gracey (pictured) in October 2022, along with her 2-year-old son, Deklan. Despite having only weeks to live, she stands by her decision and cherishes every moment with her two children
Kann gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Gracey in October 2022, along with her 2-year-old son, Deklan.
The doctor has predicted that she only has about eight months to live after the birth of her baby, but miraculously, Kann is still here almost a year later.
“Every day I look at my beautiful baby and think how easy it was for them to tell me to abort – like she was nothing,” Kann said. Fox News digital.
“If I had listened — as most patients do, because they trust their doctors and don’t do their own research — my baby wouldn’t be here,” she said. “It’s a miracle from God that we’re both here.”
Kann faced a major disaster this summer when she received the devastating news that her cancer had spread and there are now limited treatment options available.
Her diagnosis is called Gliomatosis Cerebri, a very aggressive tumor that affects the central nervous system and the lobes of the brain.
Doctors predict she may now only have weeks to live.
But Kann stands by her decision to refuse radiation and chemotherapy and instead uses alternative immunotherapy at the Burzynski Clinic in Houston, Texas.
She remains proud of her decision to ignore the doctor’s recommendation and credits her faith in Jesus as the biggest contributing factor to her strength to do so.
She remembers being “disgusted” by the doctors who she claims were “defying God’s will.”
“Aborting my baby was never an option for me because it goes against the will of God,” she told Fox.
“I had many deep conversations with Jesus that week in the hospital and I knew that if I held on to the Lord and His promises, He would keep my baby safe.”
“If the cancer was as bad as they said, killing my baby wouldn’t have saved me anyway,” she noted.
Kann has worked in a hospice and witnessed firsthand the toll chemotherapy and radiation took on many patients, she told the newspaper: “It doesn’t always work.”
Kann’s only hope is to stay alive and become a mother to her two young children. Her family is the reason she keeps fighting
“I knew it would be a ‘no’ for me,” she said. “I decided to go home and do my own research and find out, all while keeping my baby alive.”
Kann’s only hope is to stay alive and become a mother to her two young children. Her family is the reason she keeps fighting.
“All I ever wanted to be in my life was a mother,” she said.
“My husband is my main support,” she told Fox. “He’s amazing, and without him I wouldn’t be able to heal the way I have. And the smiles and laughter of my children help me stay strong and remind me to keep going.”
Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, oncologists have raised concerns about restrictions on abortions in Republican-led states, which could force pregnant cancer patients to delay critical treatments such as various chemotherapy treatments.
“This ruling will have implications for many different aspects of women’s health and women’s health care – but specifically for cancer patients, this could be a death sentence for some of them,” said Dr. Shikha Jain, an oncologist at the University of Illinois Cancer. Center, told ABC news.
There have been cases where young pregnant women have died due to a delay in chemotherapy treatment, often due to abortion laws.
In 2012, a pregnant 16-year-old died of leukemia complications after her mother said the hospital delayed her chemotherapy treatment because of the Caribbean country’s strict anti-abortion laws.
Doctors at Semma Hospital in Santo Domingo were reluctant to give Rosa Hernandez’s teenage daughter her chemotherapy because it could end the pregnancy, which is against the law in the island nation where the Catholic Church remains a powerful force .