“You Know What? I’m Not Doing This Anymore.”

There’s a quiet new crisis brewing in Texas following the abortion ban. It could get much worse.

BY SOPHIE NOVACK
MARCH 21, 2023

For three days last fall, Leah Wilson entered her pregnant patient’s hospital room and checked the fetus for a heartbeat. She was waiting for it to stop. The woman’s water had broken at just 19 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability, causing an infection in her uterus. The fetus would not survive, but until it died, or the woman’s condition worsened, there was little the hospital would do, said Wilson, who was her nurse at the time.

Typically in this kind of situation, doctors would terminate the pregnancy to prevent a life-threatening infection or other serious complication. But this patient was in Texas, where abortion is no longer legal.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/texas-abortion-law-doctors-nurses-care-supreme-court.html

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

Republican abortion bans restrict women’s access to other essential medicine

Many pharmacies and physicians are forced to deny patients access to drugs, such as methotrexate, that can be used to help induce an abortion

Maya Yang
Mon 26 Sep 2022

A few weeks after the supreme court’s 24 June decision to overturn the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade, the pharmacy chain Walgreens sent Annie England Noblin a message, informing her that her monthly prescription of methotrexate was held up.

Noblin, a 40-year-old college instructor in rural Missouri, never had trouble getting her monthly prescription of methotrexate for her rheumatoid arthritis. So she went to her local Walgreens to figure out why, standing in line with other customers as she waited for an explanation.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/26/us-abortion-bans-restrict-access-essential-medications

The web is home to an illegal bazaar for abortion pills. The FDA is ill-equipped to stop it.

Experts say the sites pose a public health threat that is likely to grow.

By RUTH READER
Aug 1, 2022

Enter “buy cytotec online cheap” into Google’s search engine and the first four results are sites that illegally offer to ship the abortion pills without a prescription.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that gave states the right to ban the procedure, it’s still possible to get abortion medication, even in states where it’s restricted, through telemedicine or by traveling across state lines. But the patchwork of state rules is nonetheless fertile ground for scammers looking to make money off desperate abortion patients who don’t know how to navigate them.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/01/the-web-is-home-to-an-illegal-bazaar-for-abortion-pills-the-fda-is-ill-equipped-to-stop-it-00048802

This life-threatening pregnancy complication is the next frontier in the abortion debate

This life-threatening pregnancy complication is the next frontier in the abortion debate
Ectopic pregnancies can be deadly if left untreated. But abortion opponents are telling another story.

By Anna North
Sep 11, 2019

Ectopic pregnancies can be deadly.

The condition happens in about 2 percent of all pregnancies, when a fertilized egg implants somewhere outside the uterus — usually in the fallopian tube, a tiny structure connecting the uterus to the ovary. If the pregnancy continues to grow and develop, the tube can rupture, and the pregnant person can hemorrhage and die.

In most cases, the only way to treat an ectopic pregnancy is to terminate it with medication or surgery. But now, some abortion opponents are arguing that patients with ectopic pregnancies can simply be monitored until they miscarry — or even that such pregnancies can be carried to term.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2019/9/11/20859034/ectopic-pregnancy-abortion-federalist-intrauterine-ohio-surgery

Expert panel endorses public coverage for abortion pill in Canada

Expert panel endorses public coverage for abortion pill in Canada

Kelly Grant - HEALTH REPORTER
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 19, 2017

A long-awaited expert committee report on the abortion pill is recommending that provincial and territorial governments cover the $300 cost of the medication, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The Common Drug Review (CDR) endorsement is a crucial step toward taxpayer-funded reimbursement for drugs new to Canada, including Mifegymiso, a two-drug combination kit that pro-choice advocates hope will eventually make abortions easier to obtain outside big cities.

Continued at source: Globe & Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/expert-panel-endorses-public-coverage-for-abortion-pill-in-canada/article34757082/

19.04.2017