USA – Women With High-Risk Pregnancies Have Limited Options Under Abortion Bans

Our reporting has found that abortion bans generally don’t include exceptions that cover health concerns pregnant women with chronic conditions can face — or if they do, doctors aren’t using them.

by Kavitha Surana and Lizzie Presser
January 20, 2026

For over a year, we’ve been writing about pregnant women who have died in states that banned abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we’ve been trying to better understand: Who are the women who are most likely to suffer because of these new laws?

Many of the early cases we uncovered involved fast-moving emergencies. While women were miscarrying, they needed procedures to quickly empty their uterus, and, tragically, they didn’t get them in time.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/high-risk-pregnancies-chronic-conditions-abortion-bans

20.01.2026

USA – Inside the Internal Debates of a Hospital Abortion Committee

In states that banned abortion, doctors are forced to wrestle with tough decisions about high-risk pregnancy care. “I don’t want to have a patient die and be responsible for it,” one Tennessee doctor said.

by Kavitha Surana
Feb. 26, 2024

Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.

The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-doctor-decisions-hospital-committee

“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

How are new abortion laws affecting women in the United States?

Al Jazeera
Wednesday, October 12
25 minute video

It’s been more than 100 days since the United States Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion. In that time, life has changed dramatically for millions of Americans when it comes to their healthcare choices.

Giving states individual choice when it comes to providing abortions is spurring the creation of a chaotic patchwork system across the country. The procedure is banned or severely restricted in more than a dozen states, mainly in the south. Nearly 10 other states have bans in the works, but face legal challenges. This means almost one in three American women of reproductive age – disproportionally poorer women and those of colour – now live in a state with no abortion options, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Studies show that this lack of access puts pregnant women at risk for worse financial, health and family outcomes.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2022/10/12/how-are-new-abortion-laws-affecting-women-in-the-united-states

Pregnancy Is Far More Dangerous Than Abortion

Restricting access to and prohibiting abortion in the U.S. will only increase maternal mortality in the nation that already ranks shockingly low in maternal health

By Adebayo Adesomo, Scientific American
May 30, 2022

In my medical practice, where I treat people with high-risk pregnancies, I recently treated a young woman with pulmonary hypertension. Unfortunately, this diagnosis was made late into her second trimester, well after most states allow pregnancy termination. We had to have the difficult conversation that, despite all modern medical advances, as many as one in three women with this condition will die during pregnancy. Based on that information, who should decide what level of pregnancy risk is acceptable for her? Should she? Should her government? Her case illustrates some of what’s at stake, should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pregnancy-is-far-more-dangerous-to-women-than-abortion/

30.05.2022

pregnancy complications

Pulmonary hypertension

Texas – Abortion restrictions threaten care for pregnant patients, providers say

Women’s health care providers are holding back when counseling pregnant patients about treatment options, doctors report pharmacists are hesitant to distribute some prescriptions, and OB-GYN training is diminishing for Texas medical school students.

BY SNEHA DEY AND KAREN BROOKS HARPER ,Texas Tribune
MAY 24, 2022

Teresa Kim Pecinovsky is terrified she will have a miscarriage.

The 38-year-old Houston mother of two children is in the second trimester of a high-risk pregnancy, but uncertainty about Texas abortion laws means that she — and her gynecologist — are worried about her access to proper medical care if that nightmare were to come true.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/24/texas-abortion-law-pregnancy-care/