USA – ‘Very clear’ or ‘narrow and confusing’? Abortion lawsuits highlight confusion over emergency exceptions

N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
Jan 27, 2024

A North Dakota judge's recent decision to deny a request blocking part of the state's restrictive abortion law highlights an issue abortion-rights advocates say is impacting doctors nationwide: The exceptions in strict abortion laws can be vague, causing medical providers to question when they can perform an abortion in a medical emergency.

A lawsuit in North Dakota is one of several recently filed by advocates seeking to clarify and expand the circumstances under which doctors can provide abortions during medical emergencies in states with strict abortion bans. Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at University of California, Davis, said the emergency exceptions written into these laws can be confusing for physicians and, given their high penalties, can lead doctors to "err on the side of protecting themselves and not providing care to patients."

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/27/abortion-lawsuits-emergency-medical-exceptions/72339103007/


Abortion care training is banned in some states. A new bill could help OB-GYNs get it

June 15, 2023
Pien Huang

Sami Stroebel, an aspiring obstetrician-gynecologist, started medical school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison last summer within weeks of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

"I sat there and was like, 'How is this going to change the education that I'm going to get and how is this going to change my experience wanting to provide this care to patients in the future?'"

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/06/15/1182385919/all-ob-gyns-need-abortion-care-training-new-bill-aims-to-help-them-get-it


‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it’: With abortion drug’s future in limbo, Georgia couple shares their cautionary tale

By Elizabeth Cohen and Amanda Sealy, CNN
Fri May 26, 2023

Depending on the outcome of a federal lawsuit, more women having early miscarriages could end up like Melissa Novak: septic, in the hospital and needing emergency surgery to survive. “We didn’t know if she was going to live or die,” said Novak’s husband, Stewart Day.

Novak had a miscarriage in March and was prescribed only one of the pills in a two-pill combination approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for women in her situation. Although the medication she took, called misoprostol, can help a woman have a complete and safe miscarriage, it’s not approved by the FDA to do so, and studies show that it’s less effective than when used in combination with the second drug, mifepristone.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/health/georgia-medication-abortion-miscarriage/index.html


As millions were stripped of abortion rights, mainstream outlets uplifted these five anti-choice leaders behind Roe’s reversal

WRITTEN BY JASMINE GEONZON
PUBLISHED 01/09/23

2022 marked an unprecedented assault on abortion rights, as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June and multiple states quickly moved to restrict or outright ban abortion and other reproductive care. While millions of Americans navigated under these new harsh abortion restrictions, the largest newsrooms in the country gave their platforms to the leading figures behind the effort to reverse Roe and demonize abortion care.

Marjorie Dannenfelser (Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America)
As the president of anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser has been key in backing anti-choice political candidates and supporting the passage of legal restrictions against reproductive rights. Late last year, for example, Dannenfelser stood alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) when he introduced legislation to implement a 15-week national abortion ban.

Continued; https://www.mediamatters.org/health-care/millions-were-stripped-abortion-rights-mainstream-outlets-uplifted-these-five-anti


USA – Medical students worry about where to train as several states enact abortion restrictions

By James Pollard, Associated Press
Oct 19, 2022

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Students in obstetrics-gynecology and family medicine — two of the most popular medical residencies — face tough choices about where to advance their training in a landscape where legal access to abortion varies from state to state.

Abortions are typically performed by OB-GYNs or family doctors, and training generally involves observing and assisting in the procedure, often in outpatient clinics. Many doctors and students now worry about nonexistent or subpar training in states where clinics closed or abortion laws were otherwise tightened after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/medical-students-worry-about-where-to-train-as-several-states-enact-abortion-restrictions


USA – Medical Impact of Roe Reversal Goes Well Beyond Abortion Clinics, Doctors Say

State abortion bans carry narrow but sometimes vague exceptions, and years of prison time. That’s forcing doctors to think like lawyers, and hospitals to create new protocols.

By Kate Zernike
Sept. 10, 2022

In Wisconsin, a group of doctors and lawyers is trying to come up with guidelines on how to comply with a newly revived 173-year-old law that prohibits abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman. They face the daunting task of defining all the emergencies and conditions that might result in a pregnant woman’s death, and the fact that doctors could be punished with six years in prison if a prosecutor disagrees that abortion was necessary.

A similar task force at an Arizona hospital recommends having a lawyer on call to help doctors determine whether a woman’s condition threatens her life enough to justify an abortion. Already, the hospital has added questions to its electronic medical forms so they can be used to argue that patients who had abortions would have died without them.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/us/abortion-bans-medical-care-women.html


Inside the Powerful Anti-Abortion Campaign to Convince You That Everything Is Just Fine

Be careful of what you read about miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies right now.

KIERA BUTLER AND MADDIE OATMAN
July 21, 2022

Late last month, shortly after the US Supreme Court stripped away federal protection for abortion rights, Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to Instagram with an urgent message: She wanted her followers to know that even in states where abortion will soon be illegal, doctors still would be able to terminate pregnancies to save the life of the mother. “Treating ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same thing as an abortion,” she said in a video she took of herself from inside a car. “This is very important to clear up because I know that many women are feeling fearful that they might not be able to receive life-saving care if they need it.” Commenters thanked Dr. Francis for her clarification. “The amount of people that don’t know the difference is disturbing,” said one. “So many people spreading false information. Thank you for sharing and educating!”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/inside-the-powerful-anti-abortion-campaign-to-convince-you-that-everything-is-just-fine/


Doctors weren’t considered in Dobbs, but now they’re on abortion’s legal front lines

July 3, 2022
Selena Simmons-Duffin

Historically, doctors have played a big role in abortion's legality. Back in the 1860s, physicians with the newly-formed American Medical Association worked to outlaw abortion in the U.S.

A century later, they were doing the opposite.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/03/1109483662/doctors-werent-considered-in-dobbs-but-now-theyre-on-abortions-legal-front-lines


Abortion Opponents Hear a ‘Heartbeat.’ Most Experts Hear Something Else.

Embedded in abortion laws in Texas are disputed assertions about embryonic development and the procedure’s risks. Chief among them: whether the early embryo has a heart.

By Roni Caryn Rabin
Feb. 14, 2022

The Texas law banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy is based on a singular premise disputed by many medical experts: that once an ultrasound detects electrical cardiac activity in an embryo, its heart is beating and a live birth is on the way.

At this very early stage of a pregnancy, however, the embryo is the size of a pomegranate seed and has only a primitive tube of cardiac cells that emit electric pulses and pump blood.

Continued:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/health/abortion-heartbeat-debate.html


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/