Dr. Susan Bane | April 30, 2024
There is not a single state or federal law in America that prevents a qualified health care professional from providing lifesaving care for pregnant women and girls who experience a miscarriage, ectopic (tubal) pregnancy or any other life-threatening medical emergency. This was true before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade and has remained true after the decision.
What is not true is the false narrative that the confusion that exists about women being able to receive such care is the result of abortion laws themselves that have gone into effect since the Dobbs opinion. The actual fault is the egregious failure of the implementation process.
The legislative branch of the government makes laws, while the executive branch has responsibility for implementation and day-to-day enforcement. The appalling failure to properly implement and enforce new laws related to abortion has led to massive confusion that could have been prevented with proper communication and education.
Some health care professionals have mismanaged women and provided negligent medical care because of a lack of understanding of new laws in their states at many different levels of implementation. There are, however, no states with emergency protocols that force doctors to practice this type of negligent care. The medical care that doctors can provide women in emergent situations is no different before or after Dobbs.
That is the message that’s most important for the public to understand — if you are a woman who is pregnant or a man who has a wife, sister, daughter, girlfriend, etc. and she gets pregnant, there is no law in this entire country that prevents women and their pre-born children from receiving lifesaving emergency medical care — period.
You do not have to vote out of fear as happened in the passage of ballot initiatives that constitutionalized “abortion rights” in four states (Vermont, Michigan, California and Ohio), and will be on the ballot in several states this year.
Voting yes successfully placed abortion without limits — throughout the entirety of pregnancy — into state constitutions, with the most recent in Ohio last fall.
We can learn a lot from the Ohio voting. CNN conducted an exit poll of 3,658 voters and found that:
• 94% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans voted yes for the amendment to constitutionalize abortion as a right.
• 59% of respondents said they’re dissatisfied or angry Roe v. Wade was overturned because they feel women lost reproductive rights and/or women lost access to health care (miscarriage, ectopic, medical emergencies, etc).
• 6% of self-identified liberal respondents voted no for the ballot initiative, whereas 13% of conservatives voted yes for the initiative.
• 8% of Biden voters in 2020 said no to constitutionalizing abortion, while 19% of Trump voters said yes.
Perhaps the most thought-provoking polling came from a different source and revealed that among those who voted yes to constitutionalize abortion in Ohio with no limits (i.e., even in the second and third trimester):
• 30% believed life begins at conception.
• 52% of Catholics voted yes.
•-24% of born again/evangelical Christians voted yes.
• 31% of Christians who attend church more than once a week voted yes.
I do not believe, nor do several polls over the years suggest, that Americans are comfortable with abortions of pre-born children who could survive outside the womb using the barbaric D&E procedure in which babies are literally dismembered. Yet, this is what most Ohioans said yes to when they voted for unlimited abortion.
The “Yes” campaign coalition run by Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights — many members of which are not obstetricians and gynecologists — built a campaign on blatant lies, particularly around emergency pregnancy situations and miscarriage, arguing that abortion regulations would restrict medical care in these situations when that is not true. Voters heard over and over that without this constitutional amendment, doctors can’t do their jobs.
These statements were simply false, but they hijacked the emotions of some Ohioans, many of whom subsequently voted scared.
So, how do we improve the implementation process of new abortion regulations and protect women? The same way any other new law is properly implemented. The executive branch of government must do its job. Governors must designate who is responsible for putting the law into effect and ensure that occurs.
An example of how this is happening is that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed into law a medical education bill that directs South Dakota’s Department of Health to create a video explaining the state’s abortion regulations for health care professionals and the general public. The purpose of this bill is to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion law and when doctors are permitted to intervene to save a pregnant woman’s life.
An administration’s political agenda shouldn’t influence the process of implementing any law, particularly laws related to abortion, as confusion and misinformation harms women. Health care professionals and hospital systems need clarity. I have heard too many times that hospital attorneys who do not have a medical license have interfered in patient care due to a lack of understanding of what an abortion is and what it is not.
An induced abortion is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an intervention intended to terminate a suspected or known ongoing intrauterine pregnancy and that does not result in a live birth — the intention of the procedure is to produce a dead baby. That is the only procedure these laws mention.
An induced abortion is completely different than when doctors must prematurely separate our maternal and fetal patients and the unintended consequence is the death of our fetal patient. It is not an induced abortion when we intervene with the intention of saving both lives, even when our fetal patient unintentionally dies. I have had to intervene in this way hundreds of times as an obstetrician and gynecologist, and no law in this country prevents me from doing so now or before the Dobbs opinion.
It is time for my colleagues in the profession of medicine who believe that induced abortion is part of reproductive health care to communicate the truth with integrity. Shame on you for trying to confuse the general public. That messaging is only scaring our patients and those who love them and is an unethical approach to communicating the truth about these laws. Knock it off!
Susan Bane, M.D., Ph.D, is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and serves as medical director for three pregnancy centers in eastern North Carolina, including Choices Women’s Center in Wilson.
This article was first published in The Wilson Times. You can read the original article here.
