50 in the next 25 months. Times a wasting.
This past fall, when Lauren Miller of Dallas was 13-weeks pregnant with twins, she got horrible news. One of the twins had trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that causes about 90% of fetuses to die before birth. The other twin was healthy.
She learned from a genetic counselor that continuing to carry both fetuses could put the healthy one at risk. She saw a doctor who specializes in high risk pregnancies who told her: “You can’t do anything in Texas and I can’t tell you anything further in Texas, but you need to get out of state.”
That’s exactly what she did. Miller traveled to Colorado and, at 15-weeks pregnant, she had a “selective reduction” procedure to help ensure her pregnancy with her healthy twin could continue.
When she returned to Dallas and continued her prenatal care, she found herself navigating silence around abortion. She wondered, if the ultrasound technician knew she’d traveled out of state for an abortion, could she get reported? “You don’t know where anybody stands, so it feels like we’re all kind of talking in code,” Miller says.
"I have colleagues who say cryptic things like, ‘The weather’s really nice in New Mexico right now. You should go check it out.’ Or, ‘I’ve heard traveling to Colorado is really nice this time of year,’ " says Miller’s OB-GYN. Patients have to be well-educated enough to pick up on these hints, do their own research, and figure out what to do next. They also have to have the means to travel or find funding to do so, if they want to pursue abortion.
The doctor herself is careful not to put things in writing, and even having frank conversations with her patients about abortion options out-of-state — whether the conversations are in-person or over the phone — makes her feel vulnerable. “I am putting myself out there,” she says. “If a patient’s grandmother and or partner or sister finds out that I’ve talked to them about an abortion, and that’s something that really, really upsets them, all they have to do is find a lawyer and all of a sudden I’m ‘aiding and abetting’ someone into an abortion.”
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Its like a fucked up version of 1984 specifically for women
i was thinking handmaid’s tale, but yeah. chilling
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working as intended
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WTF. I’d hope she gets a successful civil suit out of it, but I assume that’s asking for too much.
God damn it. Now I gotta pull out the “hes running” again
A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer
Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park. The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives.
Free link
This story is horrifying. It does have the point too that the suing doctors for abortions clause is an effective ban because a doctor doesn’t operate alone so, in reality, you’re needing 5, 10, 15, etc people to all agree and be willing to potentially be sued
First, Goldberg and a colleague tried the interventional radiology department. To lower Hollis’ chance of bleeding, Goldberg wanted doctors to insert a special gel into the artery that supplied blood to her uterus to reduce its flow. But that department’s leadership didn’t feel comfortable participating.
Next, they approached a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who a week earlier had said he would be able to provide an injection to stop the fetus from growing and decrease blood flow. But once the law went into effect, that specialist grew uneasy, he told ProPublica. He asked that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The specialist would have to do the procedure in a room of nurses and scrub techs with an ultrasound image projected on the wall — all potential evidence that could be used against him in a trial. He thought about his family, what it would mean to go to prison. “I’m so disappointed in myself,” he told Goldberg and his colleague as he refused to participate.
Shocked, I tell you.
Idaho already has some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books, with nearly all abortions banned in the state and an affirmative defense law that essentially asserts any doctor who provides an abortion is guilty until proven innocent. And now Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.
House Bill 242, which passed through the state House and is likely to move quickly through the Senate, seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care without parental consent. The legislation would create a whole new crime — dubbed “abortion trafficking” — which is defined in the bill as an “adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for the minor. “Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation adds.
Abortion trafficking would be a felony, and those found guilty would face two to five years in prison. The legislation also includes a statute allowing the Idaho attorney general to supersede any local prosecutor’s decision, preemptively thwarting any prosecutor who vows not to enforce such an extreme law.
Since the bill would criminalize anyone transporting a pregnant minor within the state to get an abortion or to obtain medication abortion, it could apply to an aunt who drives a pregnant minor to the post office to pick up a package that includes abortion pills. Or it could target an older sibling who drives a pregnant minor to a friend’s house to self-manage an abortion at home. Either violation would carry a minimum sentence of two years in prison.
“Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University whose work focuses on constitutional law and abortion policy.
“They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor,” Cohen, who also litigates abortion-related cases with the Women’s Law Project nonprofit, told HuffPost.
State Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), one of the sponsors of the abortion trafficking bill, said plainly that the intent of the legislation is to limit minors’ ability to travel out of state without parental consent.
“It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho,” she told HuffPost. “So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right.”
Can’t wait for the Supreme Court not to put an injunction on this and leave it in effect for like 5 years until they finally strike it down as unconstitutional
I read an article the other week about how half of Oregon wants to become part of Idaho because Idaho better represents their values.
Was with you up until this.
A critical access hospital that serves a rural community northwest of Boise will no longer deliver babies after June 1.
Valor Health’s decision to stop offering labor and delivery care in Emmett comes on the heels of a North Idaho hospital shuttering its maternity services.
It also comes as the Idaho Legislature is on track to defund research into preventing maternal deaths; as state lawmakers have banned nearly all abortions; and as Idaho chooses not extend its postpartum Medicaid coverage.
“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving,” Bonner General’s announcement earlier this month said. “Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines.”