The end of Roe. (no more question mark)
The Future?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207423
A Preview of the Dangerous Future of Abortion Bans — Texas Senate Bill 8
Some Texas clinicians still provide abortion counseling and referrals, believing that the law does not limit their free speech, while also noting that such freedom depends on a clinician’s willingness to assume possible legal risk. On the basis of legal guidance, other Texas clinicians believe they are not even allowed to counsel patients regarding the availability of abortion in cases of increased maternal risks or poor fetal prognosis, although before SB8 they would have done so. Many clinicians have also been advised that they cannot provide information about out-of-state abortion facilities or directly contact out-of-state clinicians to transfer patient information. These fears have disrupted continuity of care and left patients to find services on their own.
Many patients we interviewed described feeling hurt and confused when they learned their condition was not exempt from SB8 and they could not receive care in their home state. After receiving fetal diagnoses of spina bifida and trisomy 18, a 39-year-old woman was shocked that her physician would not even inform her about termination options. She said, “When you already have received news like that and can barely function, the thought of then having to do your own investigating to determine where to get this medical care and to arrange going out of state feels additionally overwhelming.”
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Patients with pregnancy complications or preexisting medical conditions
that may be exacerbated by pregnancy are being forced to delay an
abortion until their conditions become life-threatening and qualify as
medical emergencies, or until fetal cardiac activity is no longer
detectable. An MFM specialist reported that their hospital no longer
offers treatment for ectopic pregnancies implanted in cesarean scars,
despite strong recommendations from the Society for Maternal–Fetal
Medicine that these life-threatening pregnancies be definitively managed
with surgical or medical treatment.4
Some clinicians believe that patients with rupture of membranes before
fetal viability are eligible for a medical exemption under SB8, while
others believe these patients cannot receive an abortion so long as
there is fetal cardiac activity. In multiple cases, the treating
clinicians — believing, on the basis of their own or their hospital’s
interpretation of the law, that they could not provide early
intervention — sent patients home, only to see them return with signs of
sepsis. An obstetrician–gynecologist recalled only one patient who was
able to obtain an abortion at their hospital under SB8’s maternal health
exemption, because her severe cardiac condition had progressed to the
point that she was admitted to the intensive care unit. As an MFM
specialist summarized, “People have to be on death’s door to qualify for
maternal exemptions to SB8.”
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The climate of fear created by SB8 has resulted in patients receiving
medically inappropriate care. Some physicians with training in dilation
and evacuation (D&E), the standard procedure for abortion after 15
weeks of gestation, have been unable to offer this method even for
abortions allowed by SB8 because nurses and anesthesiologists, concerned
about being seen as “aiding and abetting,” have declined to
participate. Some physicians described relying on induction methods to
get patients care more quickly; others reported that their colleagues
have resorted to using hysterotomy, a surgical incision into the uterus,
because it might not be construed as an abortion. Although induction
may be appropriate in some circumstances, hysterotomy increases a
patient’s immediate risks for complications as compared with D&E or
labor induction and has negative implications for all future
pregnancies.
The constraints on physicians’ autonomy to practice evidence-based
medicine have created concern about the law’s long-term consequences for
the medical field.5
SB8 has taken a toll on clinicians’ mental health; some physicians
report feeling like “worse doctors,” and some are leaving the state. As a
result, clinicians worry that pregnant Texans are being left without
options for care and without doctors capable of providing it.
We're going to have to wait for someone to die before this gets resolved.
drummerboy said:
We're going to have to wait for someone to die before this gets resolved.
They won't care when people die.
In forced birther land hypocrisy and inconsistency is never an issue. Even when confronted right at their faces.
When the SC ruled abortion is not a federal matter, Republicans were in titter on why leaving it to states is the right thing to do.
Now we have Graham touting a federal abortion ban law. So much for states rights.
Then we have the inconsistency of Hershel Walker, Republican senate candidate. The sad thing is the morons will still vote for him.
Rand Paul's objection gives a political "out", since that's a home-state senator objecting.