As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, campaigns on a federal abortion ban, which would limit such care in both red and blue states, and as the Heritage Foundation attacks IVF, a new report out of Louisiana reminds us once again that post-Roe America isn’t dangerous just for women who want to terminate pregnancies but also for women who welcome their pregnancies and are seeking prenatal care.
In some cases, doctors are refusing to even see patients until after 12 weeks — that is, until after their first trimester.
“We are seeing more cases where OB-GYNs are not acting and are making the woman wait until complications arise, waiting for signs of infection, and then it is more complicated and difficult,” the report from Lift Louisiana, a reproductive rights organization, says. The report says that “in general, we are seeing more pregnancies where the correct management is delayed.” In some cases, doctors are refusing to even see patients until after 12 weeks — that is, until after their first trimester, when miscarriages are less likely and they, therefore, can’t be accused of having done something or having given some advice that caused them. Here is a case of pregnant women not getting prenatal care because conservative politicians in both parties have threatened their doctors.
Doctors are right to be worried. A doctor who deals with high-risk pregnancies told Lift Louisiana last year, “Our attorney general, Jeff Landry, sent us all a letter saying, ‘I will put you in jail if you break these rules.’ Literally, I am out to get you, so don’t break these rules. So, you do feel a little bit like there’s a target on your back because you want to do what’s right for the patient.”
On July 29, 2022, after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe but also during a period when a state judge had blocked Louisiana’s abortion ban from taking effect, Landry sent a letter to the Louisiana State Medical Society that said, “The temporary restraining order does not — and cannot — immunize medical providers from liability from criminal conduct.” He ended with the threat that “any medical provider who would perform or has performed an elective abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is jeopardizing his or her liberty and medical license. It is the intent of this office to see the laws and Constitution of the State of Louisiana are upheld.”
Landry, a Republican, has since been elected governor of Louisiana.
“There are going to be deaths that didn’t have to happen,” a New Orleans OB-GYN, Dr. Nicole Freehill, told Lift Louisiana. “There are going to be severe complications that didn’t have to happen.” Louisiana already had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in this country. It can only grow worse now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
What’s happened since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has been even worse than our worst fears. Take Jaci Statton. She says she presented with a life-threatening pregnancy complication, but an Oklahoma hospital sent the 25-year-old back outside to sit in her car in the hospital parking lot until she was, as doctors saw it, sick enough for them to legally treat her. She later told The Washington Post, “It was the closest I’ve ever felt to death.” In Arlington, Texas, Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz was denied an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is never viable. It always results in fetal death and can cause the death of the mother. “I was scared I was going to ... lose my entire reproductive system if they waited too long,” Norris-De la Cruz told the Post. There are hundreds of stories of women pregnant with nonviable fetuses unable to get the abortions they desperately need. Their cases illustrate that abortion is health care.
But the Louisiana report shows that women who need or want to terminate aren’t the only ones being denied health care. It has become clear that pregnant women are getting a lower standard of care post-Roe because doctors who don’t want to lose their licenses, end up in jail or be fined hundreds of thousand dollars are afraid to treat them.
Pregnant women are getting a lower standard of care post-Roe because doctors are afraid to treat them.
“The confusion and fear caused by the bans have led patients and clinicians to be unsure of what information they can ask for or provide,” the Lift Louisiana report says, “including whether a patient is experiencing a miscarriage and referrals to abortion care outside the state.”
Cecile Richards, the former head of Planned Parenthood, told me in an email, “The report from Louisiana makes it clear that getting pregnant in the state — or in any state that has banned or severely restricted abortion — is a dangerous proposition. Politicians are now interfering with the medical judgment of providers as well as preventing pregnant people from getting prenatal care and other care they need to preserve their future fertility or even their life. It’s a state of emergency in Louisiana, and depending on the November elections, we could have a national abortion ban, eliminating healthcare rights in every state.”
Jen Klein, who directs the White House Gender Policy Council, said in an email, “These extreme state laws have caused chaos and confusion, and women are being denied the essential care they need. But these dangerous state laws do not change the responsibility that health care providers have to their patients in emergencies covered by the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.”
She said the Biden administration is “working with doctors, hospitals, and patients to make these federal requirements clear while the Department of Justice defends that understanding in the Supreme Court. No woman should be denied the care she needs.”
None of this is about abortion anymore. These are women who just want medical care. Doctors can’t properly treat their patients when they’re under attack from government officials.
Overturning Roe is having a million reverberations, but the biggest one is the increased danger for pregnant women. America already has a terrible maternal and fetal mortality rate, and that rate is two times higher for Black and Indigenous women. Now, post-Roe America is a country where pregnant women are denied the care they need because conservative politicians are threatening to lock their doctors up.