Women will die
Already the post-Dobbs horror stories are mounting. That’s what happens when religious zealots write laws. Either in Afghanistan or in the United States:
A sexual assault survivor chooses sterilization so that if she is ever attacked again, she won’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s baby. An obstetrician delays inducing a miscarriage until a woman with severe pregnancy complications seems “sick enough.” A lupus patient must stop taking medication that controls her illness because it can also cause miscarriages.
Abortion restrictions in a number of states and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade are having profound repercussions in reproductive medicine as well as in other areas of medical care.
Physicians have begun denying immediate medical care to pregnant women in medical emergencies. An Ohio clinic last week had two such cases involving ectopic pregnancies, conditions in which the embryo implants outside the womb and will not survive and can threaten the life of the woman.
Dr. Jessian Munoz, an OB-GYN in San Antonio, Texas, tells ABC News these decisions were once clear cut. Not now. Under Texas law, doctors must decide if a woman is “sick enough” to be treated legally:
Munoz said he faced an awful predicament with a recent patient who had started to miscarry and developed a dangerous womb infection. The fetus still had signs of a heartbeat, so an immediate abortion — the usual standard of care — would have been illegal under Texas law.
“We physically watched her get sicker and sicker and sicker” until the fetal heartbeat stopped the next day, “and then we could intervene,’’ he said. The patient developed complications, required surgery, lost multiple liters of blood and had to be put on a breathing machine “all because we were essentially 24 hours behind.’’
In a study published this month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doctors at two Texas hospitals cited the cases of 28 women less than 23 weeks pregnant who were treated for dangerous pregnancies. The doctors noted that all of the women had recommended abortions delayed by nine days because fetal heart activity was detected. Of those, nearly 60% developed severe complications — nearly double the number of complications experienced by patients in other states who had immediate therapeutic abortions. Of eight live births among the Texas cases, seven died within hours. The eighth, born at 24 weeks, had severe complications including brain bleeding, a heart defect, lung disease and intestinal and liver problems.
Seeking sterilization
Abortion opponents have sought to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades. Yet among the current impulses behind the conservative Christian push for banning abortion are demographic and political changes in the U.S. — the browning of America — plus replacement theory and an obsession with birth rates. With white women are not having enough babies.
Yet there are early signs that the Dobbs decision could be counterproductive for that goal:
Dr. Tyler Handcock, an Austin OB-GYN, said his clinic has heard from hundreds of patients seeking sterilization since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision. Many choose this route because they fear long-acting birth control or other contraceptives could also become targets, he said.
His clinic scheduled a July 9 group counseling session to handle the surge, and every one of the 20 patients who showed up to hear about the risks and ramifications of fallopian tube-removal made an appointment to have the surgery.
Some physicians are reluctant to perform the surgery on young women with many reproductive years left, fearing they will change their minds later. Handcock said he heard from one 28-year-old woman who said six OB-GYNs declined to sterilize her.
Handcock said the choice should be up to patients.
Be careful what you wish for, the dog who caught the car, etc.
In Afghanistan. Taliban officials insist their rigid interpretation of Islamic law is behind their decrees. No woman may receive health services now unless accompanied by a mahram, a male chaperone:
In the southern province of Ghazni, a 42-year-old midwife said the Taliban have been preventing doctors from examining women without a mahram present since November 2021. (We are not identifying Afghans who spoke to us by name to protect their safety.)
“When the Taliban understood the two women were not accompanied by men, they forced them out of the clinic and beat them with the butts of their rifles,” she said, citing a recent example. They had brought a sick infant in for a checkup.
“Doctors are also scared of treating female patients,” a government worker told Human Rights Watch.
Echoes of that now in the U.S,
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.