If Trump wins the election, this is what’s at stake

Women and doctors describe heart-wrenching decisions under what may be the US’s strictest abortion ban in Idaho

Carter Sherman in Boise, Idaho
Mon 21 Oct 2024

When Jennifer Adkins and her husband were considering having a second child in Idaho, they vaguely thought how the state’s near-total abortion ban could affect them. But Adkins’ first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, she didn’t even use an epidural when she gave birth. Her next pregnancy, she expected, would be similar.

But in April 2023, 12 weeks into her second pregnancy, an ultrasound scan shattered that hope.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/21/idaho-abortion-trump

Crisis pregnancy center’s forms give rare insight into anti-abortion practices

The free organizations offer counseling while trying to dissuade women from having abortions. They promise to protect health data but aren’t bound by federal privacy law.

Oct. 13, 2024
by Abigail Brooks

A free family planning center in Twin Falls, Idaho, asks its visitors for sensitive, private information, including nonmedical questions about religion and financial status, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

While the Sage Women’s Center promises to protect the information of its clients, it isn’t bound by medical privacy laws and may be misleading women who are coping with unplanned pregnancies, consumer advocates say.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/crisis-pregnancy-centers-forms-privacy-abortion-rcna172566

USA – Helping a minor travel for an abortion? Some states have made it a crime.

Last year, Idaho became the first state to outlaw ‘abortion trafficking,’ and in May, Tennessee enacted a similar law

By: Anna Claire Vollers
August 26, 2024

Helping a pregnant minor travel to get a legal abortion without parental consent is now a crime in at least two Republican-led states, prompting legal action by abortion-rights advocates and copycat legislation from conservative lawmakers in a handful of other states.

Last year, Idaho became the first state to outlaw “abortion trafficking,” which it defined as “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a pregnant minor to get an abortion or abortion medication without parental permission. In May, Tennessee enacted a similar law. And Republican lawmakers in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma introduced abortion trafficking bills during their most recent legislative sessions, although those bills failed to advance before the sessions ended.

Continued; https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/08/26/helping-a-minor-travel-for-an-abortion-some-states-have-made-it-a-crime/

Supreme Court decision allows pregnant people in Idaho to access emergency abortion care — for now

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Thu June 27, 2024

Pregnant people in Idaho should be able to access abortion in a medical emergency in Idaho, at least for now.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law where it conflicts with federal law. With Thursday’s decision, the state would not be allowed to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person whose health is in danger, at least while the case makes its way through the courts.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/health/emtala-emergency-care-scotus/index.html

Idaho – When “abortion travel” becomes a nightmare: A tale of no good choices

She wanted a baby — but her fetus had no chance of survival. How Idaho's abortion laws led to devastating trauma

By NICOLE KARLIS
JUNE 12, 2024

Rebecca Vincen-Brown was still in her first trimester of pregnancy, in the late fall of 2022, when things started to go wrong. She had blood drawn for a standard genetic test called noninvasive prenatal testing, or NIPT, which can detect increased risks for various chromosomal disorders. The results of the test took slightly longer than normal to come back, and when they did, Vincen-Brown received a troubling phone call: The test was “inconclusive” because not enough fetal DNA was detected in her blood.

NIPT cannot diagnose fetal disorders conclusively, but the possibilities were troubling: Her fetus might have triploidy, trisomy 13 or trisomy 18, rare and serious genetic conditions involving either an extra set of chromosomes or an extra copy of one chromosome. While the specifics vary, most infants born with these conditions will live only days or weeks, and almost none will survive to adulthood.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/06/12/when-abortion-travel-becomes-a-nightmare-a-tale-of-no-good-choices/

SCOTUS v. Pregnant Patients: Idaho’s Abortion Fight Could Blow Up a “Revolutionary” Health Care Law

“My reaction can be summed up as ‘appalled,’” says health policy guru Sara Rosenbaum.

NINA MARTIN, Mother Jones
Apr 27, 2024

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what could end up being its most consequential abortion decision since Dobbs. In a case pitting Idaho’s extreme abortion ban against a federal law known as EMTALA—that since 1986 has required hospitals to provide emergency care—conservative justices seemed to embrace the idea that states can deny crisis medical treatment to pregnant patients, even if doing so means those patients suffer catastrophic, life-altering injuries. “My reaction can be summed up as ‘appalled,’” says Sara Rosenbaum, emerita professor at George Washington University who is one of the country’s foremost experts in health policy issues affecting women and families. “Will [the court] really say it is fine [to enforce] a law that costs women their organs as long as they don’t die?”

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/scotus-v-pregnant-patients-idahos-abortion-fight-could-blow-up-a-revolutionary-health-care-law/

27.04.2024

Interviews/Podcasts

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

‘How sick do they have to get?’ Doctors brace for US supreme court hearing on emergency abortions

As states ban abortions, a 1968 federal law requires hospitals that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients in a medical emergency, creating a catch-22 for care providers

Carter Sherman
Tue 23 Apr 2024

Dr Lauren Miller used to cry every day on her way to work.

A fetal maternal medicine specialist in Idaho, Miller despaired over the possibility she might be forced to tell patients she could not help them. Idaho has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, which means Miller could only perform abortions to save a woman’s life – and many patients, even those facing medical emergencies with potentially deadly consequences, were not yet sick enough to qualify.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/supreme-court-verdict-emergency-abortions-patients-doctors

USA – Patients are being denied emergency abortions. Courts can only do so much.

Doctors say they fear that following their medical judgment could cost them their license or land them in jail.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and MEGAN MESSERLY
04/23/2024

Every state abortion ban has an exception to save a mother’s life. But what qualifies as a life-threatening medical emergency in Texas may not be enough for a doctor in Idaho, and even hospitals within the same state can look at an identical case and reach different conclusions.

The legal and medical murkiness has physicians around the country begging state officials to clarify when they can terminate pregnancies without risking legal peril. And as they await guidance from states, stories of pregnant patients turned away from hospitals in medical emergencies or forced to wait until their vitals crash have become emblematic of the confusion unleashed when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ended the federal right to an abortion in 2022.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/23/doctors-abortion-medical-exemptions-00153317

USA – The Lie at the Heart of the Latest Supreme Court Abortion Case

‘Life of the mother’ exceptions are nothing more than a politically expedient lie designed to distract from the violence inherent in the maintenance of abortion bans.

4/22/2024
by TESS GRAHAM

Idaho will attempt to defend its extreme abortion ban at the Supreme Court this Wednesday. Like many other abortion bans in the United States, the Idaho law contains a so-called life exception, which purports to allow an abortion when “necessary to prevent the death” of the pregnant person. But do these exceptions actually preserve the lives of patients in practice? As Mayron Hollis, Amanda Zurawski, the family of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, and countless other women can attest, the answer is no. And the truth is, they’re not designed to.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/22/abortion-exception-life-health-of-mother-death/

Anti-abortion states are targeting an emergency healthcare law. Will the supreme court side with them?

Justices to rule whether abortion bans should undo Emtala, the Reagan-era law requiring hospitals to treat emergency patients

Jessica Glenza
Sun 21 Apr 2024

One of the only universal rights to healthcare in the US is to be treated in the emergency room – a place where doctors are required to stabilize patients if their future health or life is in serious jeopardy.

That right, guaranteed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known across the country by healthcare professionals as Emtala, was borne out of what was once a common practice called “patient dumping” – transferring patients who could not pay from private hospitals to public counterparts, even in emergency situations.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/21/emtala-supreme-court-abortion