Science Shocker! It's More Dangerous To Be Pregnant In Abortion-Ban States That Don't Care If You Die
Your semi-regular reproductive rights roundup!
Abortion rights opponents often claim they’re not trying to hurt women by banning the procedure, but rather that they are protecting life. They love life! They cherish life — so much so that they consider a zygote a fully fledged human being deserving of the same rights as you or me. More, even, because if I needed a kidney, it would not be legal for doctors to commandeer the body of any random person who would be a match and force them to give up a kidney to save my life.
Given this, you might assume (let’s pretend you’re not all that swift) that states that ban abortion would also be the best and safest states in which to get pregnant. However, doctors in those states say that women there are less likely to get the standard of care they need than are those in states where abortion is permitted. This does not come as much of a surprise to those of us who have heard and believe the stories of women dying or nearly dying due to being denied care, but it might to those who have chosen to believe those stories are made up by people who just want to rain on their “forcing people to give birth against their will” parade.
A recent survey of 40 doctors detailed how the laws in these states keep them from being able to provide the best possible care for the pregnant women they are treating. In many cases, they have to delay treatments for emergency complications, putting patients’ lives at risk for fear that performing the regular standard of care could result in them being sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
Via JAMA:
Six major themes emerged: (1) delays in care and deviations from standard practice for EPL, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, preterm prelabor rupture of membranes, and maternal comorbidities; (2) ambiguity and fear among physicians; (3) loss of patient autonomy and shared decision-making; (4) erosion of trust in the patient-physician relationship; (5) placement of physicians into new gatekeeping roles; and (6) increased health care system burdens. Physicians described requiring additional confirmatory testing, seeking institutional approval even for emergent life-saving interventions, and being forced to determine which patients were sick enough to receive medically indicated care.
And this would be why an estimated 59 women in these states have died as a result of these abortion restrictions, and why pregnant women are twice as likely to die in these states as are women in states that permit abortion (three times as likely, if they are women of color). It’s worth noting that infant mortality rates in these states have also increased, by 5.6 percent, resulting in a total of 478 excess infant deaths by 2023.
But Do “Clarifying” Laws Like The Ones Passed In Texas Help?
Not so much!
Last year, after several well-publicized incidents in which women suffered serious complications or death from being denied care as a result of the state’s abortion ban led to a lot of criticism of said abortion ban, Texas legislators passed a law “clarifying” the ban and explicitly stating that doctors could perform abortions in certain specific situations without worrying that they will be sent to prison for 99 years.
Via NPR, the “clarifications”:
Specify that a pregnant woman’s death or impairment does not have to be “imminent” for the exception to apply
Clarify that doctors can talk about abortion with patients or colleagues while determining if it’s the best treatment option
Confirm that the burden of proof is on the state if a doctor is accused of violating the law.
Except when “99 years in prison” is on the table at all, doctors are going to be hesitant to provide treatment even if that hesitancy leads to a tragic result. A recently filed lawsuit alleges that hospitals in Austin are still denying miscarriage care to women who require abortion medication to help the miscarriage complete.
Lynn Callaway developed an infection from the miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy and went to two different emergency rooms and one other medical facility in the Austin area in hopes of getting abortion-inducing medication or surgery to help expel the tissue. She was already suffering severe cramps, chills and fever so severe she thought she might die. However, despite the fact that doctors were not even dealing with a living fetus, despite the fact that she was clearly at risk of developing a serious infection, doctors sent her home and told her to take a Tylenol.
It took four days of this suffering before she was able to get the care she needed, and when she asked her doctor why she had to go through that, she was told that because of the law, doctors “have to be damned sure that it’s an actual miscarriage to be offering the pill.”
“People don’t walk into emergency rooms with signs on their forehead saying this is a miscarriage, this is an ectopic pregnancy,” Calloway’s lawyer explained. “Pregnancy is complicated and that’s why abortion bans cannot and do not work, because once you ban one type of care, you effectively ban everything.”
Abortion Rights Are Back In Missouri!
Last week, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang struck down practically every abortion-related regulation in the state, including a ban on medication abortion that has been on the books since 2018. As of this week, Planned Parenthood will start taking appointments for abortion medication, which has not been available to women in the state for almost a decade.
Also gone is the controversial requirement of a 72-hour waiting period between the initial consultation and the actual abortion, a rule put into place because legislators assume that women are too stupid to know what they want in these situations, and a host of other fairly pointless and insulting regulations.
Those regulations, via Missouri Independent:
Special licensing requirements for abortion providers.
A ban on telemedicine that requires a physician be present when a patient takes abortion medication.
Hospital admitting privileges for physicians performing abortions.
A requirement for physicians prescribing medication abortions to have a state-approved complication plan.
That medication abortion providers carry insurance covering physicians after they leave employment.
Tissue removed during a surgical abortion be sent to a pathologist
That patients be given material created by the state Department of Health and Senior Services, including a pamphlet that reads, “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
Zhang did, however, keep two of the state’s regulations — the requirement of an in-person visit to obtain abortion medication and the requirement that only a physician be allowed to perform an abortion.
This is a great, great development for women in Missouri, so naturally the state’s Republican attorney general has already announced her intent to appeal the decision, weirdly claiming that the aforementioned regulations have something to do with patient safety rather than with making it logistically impossible to get an abortion despite the fact that the citizens of Missouri voted to protect the right to abortion up until viability over a year and a half ago.
You Know Who Else Wants The Chance To Vote For Abortion Rights? Idaho, Nevada, And Virginia!
It’s true — abortion rights activists are close to getting abortion on the ballot in these three states. The initiative in Idaho, which has one of the strictest bans in the nation, has already received over 105,000 signatures, well above what is needed to make it on the ballot. It sounds surprising, but a survey conducted earlier this year found that 61 percent of Idaho voters strongly or somewhat support the proposed initiative, which would allow abortion up until fetal viability.
Things have been pretty bad for Idahoans since Roe was overturned, and not just because they can’t access abortion. They lost over 35 percent of their ob-gyns between 2022 and 2024, and that’s bad for literally everyone with a uterus, whether they are pregnant or not. But it’s also understandable, as they probably don’t want to have to choose between saving someone’s life and going to prison.
Abortion is already legal in Nevada and Virginia, but since that’s something that can always change, advocates want it put explicitly in the state constitution that people have a right to abortion. The initiatives may also do a lot to help any Democrats running in the battleground states, as people may very likely be more motivated to get to the polls with abortion on the ballot. It may also force Republicans to have to get into the abortion fight, which they probably don’t want to do in either of those states.
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Whose Fault Is All Of This? Susan Collins Blames Chuck Schumer!
Maine Senator Susan Collins, whose vote was crucial in getting Brett Kavanaugh on the bench and who swore up and down that neither he nor Neil Gorsuch would touch Roe, said in a recent interview on Fox that she does not think that her votes to confirm them had anything to do with the fact that Roe was overturned.
Transcript Via Joe My God:
FOX HOST: “You held out for quite some time on your vote of support for now-Justice Kavanaugh. Is this an issue that you think is troublesome for you in this race, now that Roe v. Wade was overturned, in Maine, across the country?”
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: “Well, first of all, let me make clear that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the fact is that whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-to-3 vote. And also, I supported the justices like Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Brown Jackson, who voted to sustain Roe v. Wade. I also joined with a bipartisan group of senators to codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land. Regrettably, the then-leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, refused to bring up our bill.”
First of all … she’s wrong. While Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, he actually dissented on overturning Roe and, in fact, argued against doing so. Second, while Chuck Schumer isn’t my favorite person either, he did repeatedly bring bills designed to codify Roe into the law to the floor. Not her bill, per se, but the Women's Health Protection Act and others.
It would be fair of her to say that she was one of the two votes Kavanaugh needed to get a majority of the Senate, and is therefore not solely to blame … but that’s almost worse. She didn’t even have to vote for Kavanaugh in order for him to be confirmed, she could have done the right thing with literally no difference in outcome, but she did so anyway. And fuck her for that.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Never forget:
Ricky Davila
@therickydavila.bsky.social
“Pro-life” House fascist republican Kat Cammack tried to hide her life threatening pregnancy complication in 2024 where she needed an abortion in order to survive.
So abortion healthcare services are okay for them when they need it, but not everyone else? Evil hypocrites.
https://bsky.app/profile/therickydavila.bsky.social/post/3mowj7a3z4s2v
Earlier this year, a friend of mine informed me his daughter was pregnant. He, his daughter and her husband live in Huntsville, AL. The pregnancy was planned. However, considering the skullduggery around abortion and fetal protection, he sat them down and talked them through a move to New York until the baby was born. Luckily, he has the means and connections to make this happen. I feel for those that aren't so lucky.
Edit: She's into her 5th month and so far, so good.