She had not planned to become pregnant in her 30s and said her doctor had warned her that the pregnancy was high risk and could be life threatening. This month, she rushed to have an abortion near her Phoenix home, worrying that if the Supreme Court acted before her, she might lose her choice. “I probably would not have finished. “Or I would die,” said Brianna, a nursing assistant who asked to be identified only by her first name. “It certainly saved my life.” With the Supreme Court expected to overturn a 50-year-old and soon abolish the right to abortion, pregnancies like Brianna’s risk of a serious medical condition are emerging as complex flashpoints in the fight for women’s health. Arizona is one of more than 20 states where abortion could be banned or severely curtailed following a Supreme Court ruling. An age-old law that could come into force if Roe was overthrown would forbid women from having an abortion “unless it is necessary to save her life.” And a new 15-week ban on abortions, signed into law in March, includes an exception for medical emergencies. There are similar exceptions in almost every state where abortion would be illegal. However, for abortion rights activists, the clauses are too narrow or too vague and would endanger women’s lives. Women with high-risk pregnancies and their doctors are already anxious about which medical line to clean to legally justify an abortion. “How almost dead should one be?” asked Dr. Leilah Zahedi, a Tennessee-based fetal obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies and abortions. “Do I just have to watch someone bleed to death? Or provide care and then be reported and go to jail? I do not know.” Opponents of abortion say such speculation is exaggerated, arguing that doctors are trained to make life or death decisions on a daily basis and are more likely to make mistakes in protecting the mother than the fetus.
Read more about the abortion debate in the US
“The health exemption allowed abortions to take place until birth,” said Kathy Herod, president of the Arizona Center for Social Conservation Policy. “The life of the mother will mean the prevention of the death of the mother.” The issue can be particularly complicated in pregnancies in which the fetus is unlikely to survive. Continuing with such pregnancies can endanger a woman’s health, but doctors say that serious prenatal abnormalities in many cases can only be confirmed after the first trimester, when most abortions will be banned in these states. Being forced to carry a dying baby until it is over has not only a physical cost, but also an impact on a woman’s mental health that some doctors claim is life threatening. But only five states with abortion bans and Republican-controlled legislatures – South Carolina, Louisiana, Utah, Mississippi and Georgia – have some exceptions to fatal fetal malformations, according to the Gut Institute. . Other states make no exception for cases where a fetus is unlikely to survive, and laws in some states, including Ohio and Arizona, specifically prohibit abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome or other non-fatal conditions. Before the court ruling, maternal-fetal medicine experts are already trying to understand the vague new standards in their states for what constitutes legally permissible abortion in America after Roe. An aggressive cancer patient? A pregnancy in which a fetus had a 10 percent chance of surviving outside the womb? “There is no bright line in medicine or science that says, ‘Okay, you’re officially dying,’” said Dr. Jen Villavicencio, a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. If doctors avoid medically necessary abortions because they worry the law is unclear, more women will have high-risk pregnancies or delay termination until they can travel to a different state, and high pregnancy-related death rates in America could increase, say experts in maternal fetal medicine. The results are said to be more pronounced in low-income women and in black, Hispanic and indigenous patients, who already die at rates three times higher than white women in pregnancy. Opponents of abortion, however, defended the narrow exceptions of “life”, saying the laws would protect fetuses while allowing women to have abortions in medical emergencies – conditions that would “weaken a significant bodily function” in the language. many state bans on abortions. Beau LaFave, a Republican state spokesman for abortion in Michigan, defended laws that did not exclude serious fetal malformations, saying fatal abnormalities were rare and that abortion was used to kill aborted fetuses. Mr. LaFave was born with genetic abnormalities that required multiple surgeries and, when he was 18 months old, amputation of his left leg. “Democrats would like me to be fired and I think killing people just because they have a disability is immoral and should be illegal,” he said. “It’s not compassionate.” But women who have terminated otherwise desirable pregnancies for medical reasons said the laws would exacerbate the pain and confusion of an already painful experience. Since the draft Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, many women have turned to message boards and support groups to express their frustration and questions. In more than a dozen interviews, women who have quit for medical reasons said they felt long-forgotten tips in the discussion about access to abortion. Now, they say, their cases have illustrated the gap between the way abortion restrictions are written and the creepy reality of how pregnancy can actually develop (most spoke on the condition that they be identified only with their little one name). In Pittsburgh, Tracee Miller, 38, was devastated when a 12-week prenatal genetic test on her pregnancy showed that her fetus probably had a genetic condition called Trisomy 13. About 90 percent of babies born with it live no longer a year, if even to survive until delivery. Ms Miller is now seeking a more definitive examination of her amniotic fluid before deciding whether to terminate her pregnancy. However, she said she could not get the test she needed until she was 16 weeks pregnant – a developmental stage where abortion would be banned in many states.
The State of Roe vs. Wade
Card 1 of 4 What is Roe vs. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in all of the United States. Judgment 7-2 was announced on January 22, 1973. Judge Harry A. Blackmun, a modest Midwestern Republican and advocate for the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion. What was the case? The ruling overturned laws in several states that had banned abortion, saying they could not ban the procedure before the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb. This point, known as fetal viability, was about 28 weeks old when Roe was decided. Today, most experts estimate that it is about 23 or 24 weeks. What else did the case do? Roe v. Wade created a framework that governs the regulation of abortions based on the trimesters of pregnancy. In the first quarter, it allowed almost no regulation. In the second, it allowed regulations to protect women’s health. Third, it allowed states to ban abortions if exceptions were made to protect the life and health of the mother. In 1992, the court dropped this framework, while confirming Roe’s substantial involvement. Although abortion would remain legal in Pennsylvania, Ms Miller said the idea of having to endure the health risks and emotional pain of a doomed pregnancy was elusive. “Having this constant reminder of a baby dying inside you – forcing someone to bring it to an end and seeing this baby die within minutes of its birth is a cruelty I just can’t stand. “, he said. “The feeling that you are not able to make a decision about something that is inside you, for you, is unbelievable.” In Texas, which imposed a ban on abortions after six weeks, doctors can perform abortions in a “medical emergency” that puts a patient at risk of dying or suffering “significant damage to a major bodily function.” But doctors say patients with medical complications are already leaving the state for abortions because they are worried about how the law will be enforced. Dr Alice Mark, a medical adviser to the National Abortion Federation, said a patient in Texas drove 10 hours to New Mexico to end a dangerous miscarriage in which an embryo is implanted outside the womb. Although Texas law contains an exception to these conditions, called ectopic pregnancies, Dr. Mark said the law had created a climate of fear and uncertainty about abortion care. In Utah, Dr. Kara Heizer, a specialist in maternal and fetal medicine, said a team of doctors was struggling to stay within the bounds of an abortion ban that would result from Rowe’s overthrow. They agreed that breaking the water too soon, which puts a patient at risk of infection and sepsis, would qualify the state for an emergency medical exemption. In Tennessee, doctors and hospitals exchange emails outlining a nationwide standard of care for how doctors should deal with complex cases, such as incomplete abortion ban if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. Tennessee law would only allow abortions in “extreme cases where …
