USA – Meet the Organizers Trying to Fix a Shortage of Abortion Nurses

Abortion nurse staffing has gotten worse after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health wants to improve that.

Aug 28, 2024
Sarah DiGregorio, Rewire News

In 2021, Kiernan Cobb was the only registered nurse working at a reproductive and sexual health clinic in Oklahoma City. It meant that when they had to be away (often at the clinic’s other branch in Kansas), they had to bring on a temporary nurse. That was never ideal because it not only involved orienting someone new every time but was also occasionally catastrophic—like the day the temp nurse walked off the job, abandoning patients and grinding the clinic to a halt.

Despite the fact that nurses are the largest group of health-care providers and abortion is one of the most common health-care procedures, nurses’ crucial role in abortion care has often been overlooked and underleveraged. When you need an abortion, a physician or other advanced practice provider (like a midwife) can empty your uterus with a procedure or prescribe abortion pills. But experts say that is often only a fraction—albeit a crucial one—of the care you may need.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2024/08/28/meet-the-organizers-trying-to-fix-a-shortage-of-abortion-nurses/

Bleeding and in pain, she couldn’t get 2 Louisiana ERs to answer: Is it a miscarriage?

December 29, 2022
ROSEMARY WESTWOOD
7-Minute Listen with transcript

BATON ROUGE, La. – When Kaitlyn Joshua found out she was pregnant in mid-August, she and her husband, Landon Joshua, were excited to have a second baby on the way. They have a 4-year-old daughter, and thought that was just the right age to help out with a younger sibling.

At about six weeks pregnant, Joshua, 30, called a physicians' group in Baton Rouge. She wanted to make her first prenatal appointment there for around the eight-week mark, as she had in her first pregnancy. But Joshua says the woman on the line told her she was going to have to wait over a month.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/29/1143823727/bleeding-and-in-pain-she-couldnt-get-2-louisiana-ers-to-answer-is-it-a-miscarria

USA – ‘Not Dead Enough’: Public Hospitals Deny Life-Saving Abortion Care to People in Need

‘Not Dead Enough’: Public Hospitals Deny Life-Saving Abortion Care to People in Need
Many of the poorest and sickest patients end up at public hospitals when their pregnancies go wrong. But little-known laws leave people in need with nowhere to turn.

Mar 7, 2019
Amy Littlefield

When she arrived at the public hospital in Texas, the woman was so sick she couldn’t walk. About four months pregnant, she needed an abortion to save her life. A previous pregnancy had led to heart failure. This time she faced a higher risk of death from cardiac arrest that increased as the pregnancy advanced.

But the hospital’s leadership denied her the abortion she needed.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/03/07/not-dead-enough-public-hospitals-deny-life-saving-abortion-care-to-people-in-need/

USA – Reproductive Rights at Risk With or Without Roe

Reproductive Rights at Risk With or Without Roe
In much of the country, access to abortion has already been blocked by state governments, especially for women in poverty. And if Roe goes, access will be scarcer still.

Kalena Thomhave
January 11, 2019

Recent discussions of abortion rights have been understandably chock-full of apocalyptic imagery and language. Some protesters at the U.S. Capitol in the Trump era have dressed as handmaids à la The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s story of an ultra-conservative totalitarian government that compels women to have the children of the wealthy and powerful. After Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, many — on both the left and right — assumed that Roe v. Wade was soon to fall. “Roe v. Wade is doomed,”CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin pronounced last June to much media fanfare.

Continued: https://prospect.org/article/reproductive-rights-risk-or-without-roe-0