On abortion

[LVAllen]

This actually isn't the statute in question. You are citing Section 170a. The section we've been looking at is 171.203, 171.204, and 171.205.

Here is the text of 171.205:



The definition of "medical emergency" is found in Section 171.002(3):

203, 204, and 205 don't matter unless the abortion is permissible in the first place. Under 170A, that requires a life-threatening physical condition that runs the risk of death or serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. Once Mom has one and an abortion becomes a legally available treatment, 203-205 dictate fetal heart monitoring that must take place before the abortion happens. 205 says that in an medical emergency, maybe we can dispense with the heart monitoring requirement. It does not, by itself, override the legal prohibition against abortion. We know that because 206 says so:

(b) This subchapter [meaning subchapter H, entitled "Detection of Fetal Heartbeat, consisting of sections 201-212] may not be construed to:

(1) authorize the initiation of a cause of action against or the prosecution of a woman on whom an abortion is performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter;

(2) wholly or partly repeal, either expressly or by implication, any other statute that regulates or prohibits abortion, including Chapter 6-1/2, Title 71, Revised Statutes. . .

A life-threatening condition is not required under this statute (or the one you cited, for that matter). The statute allows an abortion to proceed if the doctor believes the woman is in danger of a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.

This was a serious risk of harm. The doctors clearly could have gone forward with the procedure under this circumstance and been in compliance with the statute.

A life-threatening condition is the first requirement under 170A.002(b)(2) as well as under the definition of a medical emergency in 171.002(3). From Cox v. Texas: "Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function."

But let's set aside the disagreement about that. What major bodily function do you believe was at serious risk of substantial impairment here? I am not asking for a medical opinion, of course, just generally what you think was at risk so that the doctors could have found refuge from the prohibition.

I believe there is a difference between the risk of serious harm and the risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function, but it seems like you believe they are the same. I agree that there was serious risk of harm arising from a potential infection. Until that infection became a reality and therefore posed a life-threatening condition, I don't believe it could have fallen under the "major bodily function" language.

[Northwestcoug]

LV and AA, are you billing hours on this?

[Uncle Ted]

LV and AA, are you billing hours on this?

[LVAllen]

The second part of ProPublica's stories on deaths caused by abortion bans:
https://www.propublica.org/article/n...ion-ban-emtala

Pretty unquestionable that this was a medical emergency. But the doctor at the 3rd hospital insisted on getting two fetal ultrasounds anyway.

In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.

The state’s laws banning abortion require that doctors record the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening with a procedure that could end a pregnancy. Exceptions for medical emergencies demand physicians document their reasoning. “Pretty consistently, people say, ‘Until we can be absolutely certain this isn’t a normal pregnancy, we can’t do anything, because it could be alleged that we were doing an abortion,’” said Dr. Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN in San Antonio.

As I said before, even with "exceptions," the chilling effect on doctors' decision-making is the point. It doesn't matter if they would be covered. It doesn't matter if, in their medical opinion, an abortion is absolutely and immediately warranted. What matters is whether one notoriously anti-abortion lawyer in Austin will agree.

[Texas AG Paxton] has also made clear that he will bring charges against physicians for performing abortions if he decides that the cases don’t fall within Texas’ narrow medical exceptions.

[BigFatMeanie]

A thought exercise:

Let's say that anti-abortion foes stipulate that stricter abortion laws will contribute to some quantity (let's call that quantity X) of death of women who would/could have lived had they obtained an abortion. Could abortion rights advocates also stipulate that stricter abortion laws would create some quantity of births of healthy children that would have otherwise been aborted (let's call that number Y)?

If Y ultimately exceeds X, could we not say that stricter abortion laws are better for society considering the country's current declining birth rate?

Basically this is the same approach we take to, say, seatbelt laws. We know that seatbelts probably contribute to X number of deaths, but they also contribute to saving Y number of lives. Y is greater than X so we conclude that seat belt laws are good for society as a whole and override the individual's right to choose aspect of the question. Why does the same approach not work with abortion laws?

[Uncle Ted]

Another issue that the Dems blew it on...

Embedded Tweet

[Northwestcoug]

This article has it all. The problems with the Hyde amendment (especially after the repeal of Roe v Wade), an insurance company going out of its way to deny medically necessary care, and the inevitable consequences when abortion isn't considered health care.

https://www.propublica.org/article/e...ropublica-bsky

tldr: a woman in the Coast Guard had a miscarriage, tried standard medical therapy to complete the abortion, it didn't work, doc scheduled a D&E (standard of care) but hours before surgery Tricare said it wouldn't cover the cost (at least partly due to very strict reading of Hyde amendment but no doubt also because of general insurance immorality). Woman loses lots of blood and gets the emergency D&E, and spends a week in recovery. there's also a couple of other instances where women were forced to pay for abortions even when fetus wasn't viable.

[YOhio]

This is a really interesting trend. It shows that abortions have increased about 5% post-Dobbs, but the method of abortion has shifted significantly. Pre-Dobbs it was about 50/50 split between procedure and medication. Now it's about 35/65, with much of the medication being prescribed via telehealth. 1 in 10 of all abortions were from pills prescribed by telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned. I wonder why the number of abortions increased. It might be merely a reflection of better data collection. Maybe Dobbs pushed more people to the pro-choice side. Or maybe it caused women to be more open to abortion, if only due to outrage at the decision. To me it kind of looks like the worst of all worlds. More abortions isn't great. Unsupervised consumption of abortion pills seems dangerous. All the insane restrictions on physician action for a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy looks nothing like pro-life to me. Maybe SCOTUS should take a mulligan on that one.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-...c9fbc77a385413

[Northwestcoug]

Another in a series of anti-abortion laws preventing standard of care treatment for maternal health, this time in Arkansas:

On her fourth morning in the hospital, Waldorf was sitting on the toilet when she felt something heavy fall. There was so much blood, she couldn’t see what it was. She thought it was the baby, but a nurse confirmed it was a blood clot, 3 inches across.

Waldorf’s water had broken. All morning, she watched the amniotic fluid drain out of her. Now there was virtually no chance the fetus’s lungs would develop to reach the edge of viability in seven weeks. There was only the risk of infection, growing every passing hour.

She was convinced that this meant the doctors would finally have to induce her to avoid infection. But after confirming that her fetus still had heart tones, the OB-GYN on duty, Dr. Britte Smith, said she couldn’t induce yet. First she’d need to consult the hospital’s risk-management team.

“Oh,” Waldorf thought. “I’m a liability.”

Smith returned about two hours later, Waldorf recalled, and told her she had two options: She could remain under observation at the hospital, or she could get into her car and drive nearly four hours to Kansas, a state with no abortion ban, where doctors could induce her. The hospital would not authorize a transfer or arrange to send her in an ambulance, and it offered no explanation for why.

And this is rich. She was offered the option of leaving 'against medical advice' with very specific verbiage so that the hospital wasn't on the hook for the bill of that very medically necessary transfer:

She estimates the lost income, startup debt and out-of-pocket medical costs from her ordeal at more than $147,000. Included in the tally was more than $5,000 for the ambulance ride to Kansas, which Washington Regional was unwilling to pay for.

In a letter to Duane, the hospital’s general counsel, Thomas Olmstead, used Waldorf’s words against her — the words Large had asked her to repeat.

The ambulance transfer happened because of Waldorf’s “specific request,” he wrote, and not because the attending physician believed that Waldorf needed a “higher level of care.”

“It is simply not reasonable for you to make demand that WRMC assume responsibility for the cost of a patient-directed transfer,” he wrote. Olmstead has since been promoted to executive leadership. He did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a...content=thread

At least Texas has amended their anti-abortion laws to allow for standard of care treatment in similar scenarios (highlighted a couple of years ago in this thread