Texas Is Torturing Women Whose Pregnancies Fail

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html

No paywall
https://archive.is/bmgcw

It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there have been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies. Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing.

Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement for spooking doctors into not intervening when pregnancies go horribly wrong. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Others have suggested that doctors are deliberately refusing miscarriage treatment, apparently to make anti-abortion laws look bad. “What we’re seeing, I fear, is doctors with an agenda saying, ‘Well, I don’t know what to do’ when, in fact, they do,” the president of Ohio Right to Life said last year.

A new filing in a Texas lawsuit demolishes these arguments. In March, five women represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights sued Texas after enduring medical nightmares when they were refused abortions for pregnancies that had gone awry. Since then, the Center for Reproductive Rights says it has heard from dozens of women in Texas with similar accounts. And this week, eight more women, each with her own harrowing story, joined the suit, which asks a state district court to clarify the scope of emergency medical exceptions to Texas’ abortion ban.

*snip*

[walkingman]

1. I was listening about this on the radio today. The lawsuit will not affect the legislation

but the intent is to clarify what is legal and what is illegal in Texas concerning this ignorant legislation. Two doctors are part of the lawsuit. Physicians are being put in jeopardy by following their Hippocratic Oath with some (in Austin) actually leaving.

This is so dumb but what else would you expect in today's backwards ass Texas. In the past we were not so ignorant but since the George W Bush governorship it has just gotten worse and worse.

[lapfog_1]

2. no doctor will risk either criminal prosecution or simple loss of license

by doing ANY procedure that might be construed as abortion in those states.

Some of these states will soon lose all physicians that do obstetrics.

Have a problem pregnancy? Better move to a blue state. Even induced birth might be risky for many doctors.

[roamer65]

5. If they don't move.

1. Have a bug out bag packed and ready to go.

2. Have a vehicle that is able to make the trip on a moments notice.

3. Plan the most effcient route to a clinic/hospital in the abortion legal state.

[NotASurfer]

3. No due process, and imposed cruel and unusual punishment for the non-crime a woman wasn't convicted

of. Remember when the Republican platform was a list of gripes about the overreach of government to curtail constitutional freedom and individual liberty, instead of practical application of government overreach to impose torture and gleefully rip individual liberty to shreds?

[ecstatic]

4. uggh. Basically we have to wait for rethugs to be personally affected by these laws

for these knuckleheads to get it.

I had the most annoying back and forth with a rethug on Twitter. I was trying to explain to her that the laws that she supports will harm women who actually want their pregnancies, especially since those complications start in later weeks.

Women who don't want their pregnancies tend to resolve the problem early on, at least that was the case prior to these laws. So basically, qOP tinkering will cause more 13+ week abortions due to delays in getting an appointment out of state and it will kill / maim women who wanted their pregnancies. Good going guys!

[Hekate]

6. Knowing a felony conviction (20 to 90 years) hangs over your head could well cause hesitation...

In each case, the doctor must go to court with no presumption of innocence on their part — and then prove a negative: she would have died.

There’s an agenda all right, but it is that of anti-choice fanatics.