USA – Patients face barriers to routine care as doctors warn of ripple effects from broad abortion bans

Medical groups say the new laws are delaying patient access to a range of treatments.

By
ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and DANIEL PAYNE
09/28/2022

Patients
seeking drugs to treat everything from arthritis to acne at Walgreens and CVS
pharmacies in the dozen-plus states with near-total abortion bans must show
extra documentation to prove that they’re not using the drugs to end a
pregnancy, the companies confirmed to POLITICO. Those who can’t are, in some
cases, being turned away.

The chronic illness advocacy group Global Healthy Living Foundation said its
members in Tennessee, Texas and other states with abortion restrictions have
been refused prescriptions for methotrexate — a drug for patients with lupus
and other illnesses that also can be used to induce an abortion in the case of
an ectopic pregnancy — and they’re lobbying those states’ governors and local
officials to intervene.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/abortion-bans-medication-pharmacy-prescriptions-00059228


USA – They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.

They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.
Your OB-GYN could be one of them.

Marisa Endicott
June 4, 2020

In April 2019, when meetings like this still took place, Diane Foley took the stage in Indianapolis, looking out into the faces of anti-choice advocates and doctors who were gathered for their annual conference. The Health and Human Services official began her presentation: “Opportunities for Collaborative Engagement in Policy Development.” The bland, policy-wonkish title belied its almost-revolutionary substance: nothing less than a major shift in American health care—and a threat to the more than 4 million primarily low-income people who rely on a key government program for family planning and other care.

Title X, which Foley oversees as the head of the Office of Population Affairs—and which also includes the government’s teen pregnancy program—offers health care providers more than $286 million in funding each year. Just a month before her presentation, a new rule passed that would, for the first time, prohibit Title X recipients from performing abortions on-site or even providing abortion referrals. This effectively shut out a quarter of all clinics that were getting funding—including Planned Parenthood, which has traditionally received some $60 million a year from the program and provides more than 2.4 million patients with a slew of services, from birth control to cancer screenings to wellness exams.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/american-association-pro-life-obstetricians-gynecologists-aaplog-anti-abortion-doctors-june-medical-supreme-court-decision/


Landmark Report Concludes Abortion In U.S. Is Safe

Landmark Report Concludes Abortion In U.S. Is Safe

March 16, 2018
Alison Kodjak

Abortions in the United States are safe and have few complications, according to a landmark new study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The report, called "The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States," examined the four major methods used for abortions — medication, aspiration, dilation and evacuation, and induction — and examined women's care from before they had the procedure through their follow-up care.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/16/593447727/landmark-report-concludes-abortion-is-safe