Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.
ProPublica, September 16, 2024
In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat. She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison. Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail. It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late. Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light. Doctors warned state legislators women would die if medical procedures sometimes needed to save lives became illegal. Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine. The most restrictive state laws, experts predicted, would pit doctors’ fears of prosecution against their patients’ health needs, requiring providers to make sure their patient was inarguably on the brink of death or facing “irreversible” harm when they intervened with procedures like a D&C.
Harris Will Give Abortion Speech in Georgia After Deaths of Two Women
The New York Times, September 18, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris will give remarks in Atlanta on Friday focused on the stories of two Georgia mothers whose deaths she has argued show the consequences of the strict abortion bans passed by Republicans after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The speech is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to push reproductive rights to the center of the presidential election…Throughout her campaign, Ms. Harris has sought to tie former President Donald J. Trump, who has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who provided the key votes to overturn the federal right to abortion, to dire medical situations faced by women seeking the procedure in states where it is banned or heavily restricted. Over the past week, Ms. Harris and her campaign have repeatedly highlighted the deaths of the two women in Georgia, a crucial presidential battleground. Her campaign hammered Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, for skipping a Senate vote on legislation protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F. Aides say Ms. Harris believes appearing at the site of these bans – rushing into the fire of weighty issues, as they describe it – is an important way to leverage the power of her bully pulpit. She traveled to Arizona and Iowa shortly after those states enacted restrictions, and was the first sitting vice president to visit the site of an abortion clinic. In her remarks on Friday, Ms. Harris will call for restoring federal abortion rights and cite the women’s deaths as illustrating the devastating impacts of what she calls “Trump Abortion Bans.'”
Second Vote, Same Result: Senate Republicans Block IVF Protection Bill
The 19th, September 17, 2024
Senate Democrats on Tuesday tried and failed for the second time in just over three months to advance a bill to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF), highlighting a contrast with Republicans on issues of reproductive health care in the final weeks ahead of the November elections. All but two Republicans voted against the bill. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the running mate of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, was not present for the vote; he voted against the bill in June. Among other things, the bill would establish a statutory right to IVF and require employer-sponsored health insurance plans to cover fertility treatments. November will be the first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended the federal right to abortion. Unpopular abortion bans passed by Republican state legislatures – and their consequences – are top-of-mind for critical blocs of the electorate, and the potential impacts of the end of abortion rights on IVF were recently highlighted by a case in Alabama. Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court cited fetal personhood language within state statutes to find that frozen embryos were people, temporarily halting the procedure in the state. The GOP-controlled Alabama legislature and Republican Gov. Kay Ivey rushed to restart IVF by enacting a bill that shields IVF providers from criminal liability. Democrats there said it was a quick fix that did not address the underlying issue. Many physicians agreed that the Pandora’s box of fetal personhood laws would make it difficult if not impossible to ensure long-term protections for IVF and other forms of assisted reproductive technologies both in Alabama and across the country.
Louisiana Hospitals and Pharmacists Prep for New Abortion Pill Rules
The Washington Post, September 17, 2024
Staff in some Louisiana hospitals are doing timed drills, sprinting from patient rooms and through halls to the locked medicine closets where the drugs used for abortions, incomplete miscarriages and postpartum hemorrhaging will have to be kept – as newly categorized controlled substances – starting Oct. 1. That’s hardly the only preparation taking place across the state as a law targeting mifepristone and misoprostol, the first of its kind in the country, goes into effect in two weeks. No other state has labeled mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances,” putting them in the same category as opioids, depressants and other drugs that can be highly addictive. Louisiana’s law, passed this spring despite significant opposition from doctors, threatens incarceration and fines if an individual possesses the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice. In a Sept. 6 letter, the Louisiana Department of Health told health-care providers and professionals that the drugs should be stored “in locked/secured cabinet, compartment, or other system.” For a hospital, that can include a “secured automated medication dispensing/delivery system,” the letter says. Or, with the approval of a facility’s chief medical officer and pharmacy director, the drugs can be kept “in a locked or secured area of an obstetric hemorrhage cart or ‘crash cart.’” Avegno, an emergency medicine physician, said her concerns “have only grown” because of the state’s instruction. She fears that recent improvements in the state’s dismal maternal mortality outcomes will falter. “Most hospitals don’t have a crash cart with locked areas and controlled tracking,” she said. “It’s not medically correct to make these drugs controlled substances. It’s like the goal is stop all abortions. But there’s not much concern about collateral damage. Now who knows what will happen?”
Most Latinx Immigrants Said They Didn’t Know Abortion Was Legal in New Jersey. Meet the Group Helping the State Understand Why.
The 19th, September 17, 2024
When Ahuru immigrated to New Jersey from Peru, he didn’t expect to have so much trouble finding his HIV medication. He was uninsured, and most of the information he could find online was in English. It was only after he asked strangers on the LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr for help that he found a free clinic in nearby Newark. Soon after, Ahuru learned about an opportunity to help other Latinx immigrants navigate reproductive and sexual health care as a promotora de salud, or community health worker, through the Abortion Justice Committee of New Jersey. In June, thanks to the work of advocates and promotoras like Ahuru, the group released the first-of-its-kind community survey on the state of reproductive health services for Latinx immigrants in New Jersey. While New Jersey has some of the country’s most permissive laws on abortion, the study found nearly 70 percent of respondents did not know if abortion was legal in the state. Forty-two percent of respondents said it was hard or very hard to access reproductive health services in their area, and those who had lived in the United States for less than five years reported the highest difficulty rates in accessing services. “There’s just a severe lack of understanding in general for immigrants about what their rights are, but in particular on this issue [of] abortion access,” said Kay Escobar, founder of the Abortion Justice Committee of New Jersey. Escobar said that many immigrants, especially those who have recently arrived, are confused about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and mistake it as an abortion ban in all states. Low wages and immigration status only heighten Latinx immigrants’ barriers to exercise their medical rights even if they are aware of them, according to Escobar.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
Today is the very first #DisabledWomensEqualPayDay! And while it’s good news that we are highlighting disabled women workers for all that they do, it stinks that we have to also talk about this enormous pay gap. https://t.co/QbxcjhSjwn pic.twitter.com/LMAVKrmtsC
— National Partnership (@NPWF) September 18, 2024
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