Even Exceptions To Abortion Bans Pit A Mother’s Life Against Doctors’ Fears

By Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
JUN. 30, 2022

Layla Houshmand was eight weeks pregnant in the spring of 2021 when she woke up to find her field of vision smeared with a hazy sheen, like Vaseline rubbed on the lens of a camera. She was already worried about her own health. She’d spent the day before nursing herself through the pain of a migraine. But now the headache was worse and her vision was blurring and Houshmand was even more scared. Then the vomiting began. Nothing would stay down. During one 90-minute appointment with an ophthalmologist, she remembered vomiting 20 times.

Something was clearly going horribly wrong with Houshmand’s body. Her ophthalmologist suspected a stroke in her optic nerve and told her the condition can be caused by pregnancy, but Houshmand was stuck in a Catch-22: The pregnancy was now also preventing treatment. Doctors told her that she needed steroids and blood thinners and a specific type of MRI that could make sure there wasn’t something even more serious happening. But she couldn’t get any of those things because they could endanger her fetus.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-exceptions-to-abortion-bans-pit-a-mothers-life-against-doctors-fears/

Navigating Loss of Abortion Services — A Large Academic Medical Center Prepares for the Overturn of Roe v. Wade

Lisa H. Harris, M.D., Ph.D.
May 11, 2022, NEJM, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2206246

The intense politicization of abortion in U.S. public discourse obscures its status as a health and health care issue. Medical centers may therefore not be doing the careful preparation needed to manage the health system–wide impact of abortion’s criminalization. What follows is a framework for preparation in a state where abortion will become illegal.

At the University of Michigan, we’ve been actively preparing for the loss of abortion care since the December oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization made explicit the Supreme Court’s eagerness to overturn Roe v. Wade. In Michigan, a 1931 law criminalizing abortion will come into effect if Roe is overturned. It’s among the strictest laws in the country, permitting abortion only to “preserve the life” of a pregnant person.

Continued: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2206246?query=NC

11.05.2022

self-managed abortion

training of abortion providers

USA – My Day as an Abortion Care Provider

My Day as an Abortion Care Provider
A thank you, a prayer for my soul, a 14-year-old.

By Lisa H. Harris
Oct. 22, 2019

I became an obstetrician-gynecologist 20 years ago because I wanted to be a source of compassion and expertise for patients and their families as they navigate a wide range of reproductive experiences, including when they seek abortion care. I wanted to be someone my patients could turn to when others might abandon or judge them.

I didn’t go into medicine, nor do I write now, because I wanted to be part of political debates. But I am struck by how often abortion laws are uninformed by the needs of the people who most feel their impact. And I’m astonished at how little the political rhetoric reflects the lived experiences of women who seek abortion care, or those of their caregivers.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/opinion/abortion-clinic-doctor.html

22.10.2019

USA – Self-Induced Abortions Shouldn’t Be A Crime, Mass. Medical Society Says

Self-Induced Abortions Shouldn't Be A Crime, Mass. Medical Society Says

May 07, 2018
Chelsea Conaboy and Carey Goldberg

At its latest meeting, the Massachusetts Medical Society took a new stand: Women who attempt to end a pregnancy on their own should not be considered criminals.

Self-induced abortion is explicitly banned in seven states, and more have laws on the books that could be used to prosecute women for self-induction, according to a recent report.

Continued: http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2018/05/07/mass-medical-society-self-induced-abortion