Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom

BY AMANDA SEITZ
April 19, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to check her in. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/pregnancy-emergency-care-abortion-supreme-court-roe-9ce6c87c8fc653c840654de1ae5f7a1c

Democrats believe abortion will motivate voters in 2024. Will it be enough?

The Biden campaign is betting big on abortion rights as a major driver in this year's presidential election

By COLLEEN LONG and CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press
January 21, 2024

WASHINGTON -- When Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said recently that he was “proud” to have a hand in overturning the abortion protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake took it as a political gift, thinking to herself, “Oh my God, we just won the election.”

It may not be that simple, but as the 2024 race heats up, President Joe Biden's campaign is betting big on abortion rights as a major driver for Democrats in the election. Republicans are still trying to figure out how to talk about the issue, if at all, and avoid a political backlash.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/democrats-abortion-motivate-voters-2024-106547428

Hospitals in Two States Denied an Abortion to a Miscarrying Patient. Investigators Say They Broke Federal Law.

Doctors told her she might die but she couldn’t have an abortion under state law until she got sicker, documents show. The Biden administration says failing to act violates a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency care.

by Kavitha Surana
May 19, 2023

Mylissa Farmer knew her fetus was dying inside of her. Her water broke less than 18 weeks into her pregnancy last August, and she was desperate for an abortion.

But according to federal documents, during three emergency room visits over two days in Missouri and Kansas, doctors repeatedly gave Farmer the same chilling message: Though there was virtually no chance her fetus would survive and the pregnancy was putting her at high risk for life-threatening complications, there was nothing they could do for her.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/two-hospitals-denied-abortion-miscarrying-patient-breaking-federal-law

USA – Feds: Hospitals that denied emergency abortion broke the law

A first-of-its-kind federal investigation has found two hospitals put a pregnant woman's life in jeopardy and violated federal law by refusing to provide an emergency abortion when she experienced premature labor at 17 weeks

By AMANDA SEITZ, Associated Press
May 1, 2023

WASHINGTON -- Two hospitals that refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor put her life in jeopardy and violated federal law, a first-of-its-kind investigation by the federal government has found.

The findings, revealed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, are a warning to hospitals around the country as they struggle to reconcile dozens of new state laws that ban or severely restrict abortion with a federal mandate for doctors to provide abortions when a woman's health is at risk. The competing edicts have been rolled out since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last year.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/feds-hospitals-denied-emergency-abortion-broke-law-98983330

Texas abortion pill ruling could undermine U.S. FDA, experts say

By Ahmed Aboulenein, Reuters
Posted April 10, 2023

A federal judge’s decision last week to suspend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of abortion pill mifepristone could severely weaken the agency if allowed to stand, health policy and legal experts said.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling on Friday, which followed a March 15 hearing, was a preliminary injunction that would essentially ban sales of mifepristone while the case by anti-abortion groups before him continues in the Northern District of Texas.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/9612569/texas-abortion-pill-us-fda/

10.04.2023

News

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

FDA

Food and Drug Administration

Kaiser Family Foundation

Health secretary slams abortion pill ruling as ‘not America’

By HOPE YEN
April 9, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top health official said Sunday that a court ruling threatening the availability of a main drug used in medication abortion was “not America” and he did not rule out defying the judge’s order if necessary.

“We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Xavier Becerra, President Joe Biden’s health secretary, told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We want, yes, that women continue to have access to a drug that’s proven itself safe. Millions of women have used this drug around the world.”

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pills-mifepristone-court-order-becerra-fda-307bcfdbb08418c6a57bc8cc789428c8

09.04.2023

News

Food and Drug Administration

Fears mount around ‘catastrophic’ abortion pills case as decision nears
Conservative judges likely to decide fate of Texas lawsuit seeking to ban mifepristone nationwide

By Caroline Kitchener and Perry Stein
February 5, 2023

Abortion rights advocates delivered a stark warning to the Biden administration’s top health official in a private meeting last week: It’s time to take seriously “fringe” threats that could wind up blocking abortion access across the country. Driving their anxiety is a Texas lawsuit brought by conservative groups seeking to revoke the decades-old government approval of a key abortion drug.

The suit has been widely ridiculed by legal experts as rooted in baseless and debunked arguments. But in recent weeks, abortion rights advocates and some in the Biden administration have grown increasingly concerned that the case is likely to be decided entirely by conservative judges who might be eager for a chance to restrict abortion access even in Democrat-led states, where the procedure has remained legal since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/abortion-pills-texas-lawsuit/

‘Hot mess’: Abortion pills at pharmacies could face legal quagmires, especially in restrictive states

By Sarah Owermohle
Jan. 19, 2023

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators’ green light for pharmacists to dispense abortion pills is crashing into legal questions and simmering court battles.

The Food and Drug Administration earlier this month removed a longtime restriction that only doctors could dispense mifepristone, which is approved for abortions up to 10 weeks. The move opens the door for pharmacists to supply the drugs and shores up protections for mail orders, which have become an important channel for abortion access in the wake of Roe’s overturn last summer.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/19/abortion-pills-at-pharmacies-legal-quagmires/

American Women Turn to Cheap Abortion Pills From India Post Roe

Mail order businesses in India are shipping the pills to women in the US

By Bruce Einhorn and Dhwani Pandya
November 3, 2022

Angry over the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June, Deborah Willoughby wanted to do more than attend a rally or make a donation. So she sat down at her computer and placed an order for a pack of abortion pills from India sold under the brand name Unwanted.

India has many online pharmacies offering to sell mifepristone and misoprostol, drugs commonly used to terminate pregnancies — no questions asked and no prescription required. Plan C, an American group that provides information on how to obtain at-home abortion medication, needed volunteers to test online suppliers’ delivery claims. Willoughby signed up and placed an order via Secureabortionpills.com, which describes itself as an online international pharmacy selling generic drugs.

Continued: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-03/roe-v-wade-us-women-turn-to-cheap-abortion-pills-from-india

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