Change in UAE law on abortion eases consent rules, protects pregnant woman’s life

According to the law, consent shall not be a condition in emergency cases that require immediate surgical intervention

by Sahim Salim / Nasreen Abdulla
Mon 19 Feb 2024

An amendment to an existing UAE law has made it easier for medical professionals to conduct an abortion if the mother’s life is in grave danger. According to lawyers in the country, this significant change puts the pregnant woman in charge of her health.

“The amendments to the law updated the previous provisions to assert that only the consent of the pregnant woman, and not her husband, is required to commence an abortion operation (among other conditions),” said Hadiel Hussein, senior associate at BSA Ahmad Bin Hezeem & Associates LLP.

Continued: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/change-in-uae-law-on-abortion-eases-consent-rules-protects-pregnant-womans-life#google_vignette

19.02.2024

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/

USA – Abortion foes push to narrow ‘life of mother’ exceptions

Doctors warn women’s lives would be endangered and maternal deaths could increase.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux
May 13, 2022

The pregnant woman was bleeding heavily by the time she arrived at the hospital. Maria Phillis, an obstetrician/gynecologist, and other doctors on duty at the Cleveland medical facility transfused her with bags of blood, but her condition deteriorated rapidly. It wasn’t long before the mother faced an awful choice: Her placenta, a part of the womb, had attached in the wrong place, wreaking havoc in her body. But the baby was far too young to survive on its own.

The pregnancy was terminated to save the woman’s life — an outcome painful for all involved. “This was a very desired pregnancy,” Phillis said.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/13/abortion-ban-exceptions-mothers-life/

USA – The New Abortion Restriction No One is Talking About

Anti-abortion laws have traditionally allowed an exception to protect the “life of the mother.” Not anymore.

Opinion by MICHELE DEMARCO
04/28/2022

In 1942, my grandmother lay in a hospital bed in center city Philadelphia waiting to die. She was 26 years old, happily married, and pregnant with her first child. Only something went horribly wrong in the last trimester, and suddenly, both she and the baby were in a fight for life.

My grandfather, distraught but resolved, begged the attending physicians to do whatever it took to save my grandmother’s life, even if that meant the life inside her wouldn’t survive. But in those days that wasn’t always the practice; this was also a Catholic hospital, which forbade such a practice because it was considered tantamount to abortion. My grandfather was told she would be kept comfortable, and they would monitor both mother and baby, but that nothing would be done to privilege her life over that of their unborn child. In the end, my grandmother pulled through — barely — but sadly, the baby did not.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/28/the-new-abortion-restriction-no-one-is-talking-about-00028171

Even Texas Allows Abortions to Protect a Woman’s Life. Or Does It?

Sept. 12, 2021
By Carole Joffe and Jody Steinauer

Join us, if you will, in a thought experiment. It’s the
fall of 2022. Dr. H., an obstetrician-gynecologist, practices in a red state.
Much has changed in the reproductive rights landscape by then: In the spring,
her state rushed to pass a law similar to the notorious 2021 Texas law that
bans a large majority of abortions and incentivizes private citizens to sue
anyone helping someone get an abortion. The Supreme Court also overturned Roe
v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that year,
leaving the issue of abortion regulation to individual states; a few years
before, Dr. H.’s state passed a trigger ban that automatically banned the few
abortions that were still legal in the state when Roe fell. In her state, the
law now allows an abortion only when a pregnancy threatens the life of a
pregnant person.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/abortion-texas-roe.html