As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, campaigns on a federal abortion ban, which would limit such care in both red and blue states, and as the Heritage Foundation attacks IVF, a new report out of Louisiana reminds us once again that post-Roe America isn’t dangerous just for women who want to terminate pregnancies but also for women who welcome their pregnancies and are seeking prenatal care.
In some cases, doctors are refusing to even see patients until after 12 weeks — that is, until after their first trimester.
“We are seeing more cases where OB-GYNs are not acting and are making the woman wait until complications arise, waiting for signs of infection, and then it is more complicated and difficult,” the report from Lift Louisiana, a reproductive rights organization, says. The report says that “in general, we are seeing more pregnancies where the correct management is delayed.” In some cases, doctors are refusing to even see patients until after 12 weeks — that is, until after their first trimester, when miscarriages are less likely and they, therefore, can’t be accused of having done something or having given some advice that caused them. Here is a case of pregnant women not getting prenatal care because conservative politicians in both parties have threatened their doctors.
Doctors are right to be worried. A doctor who deals with high-risk pregnancies told Lift Louisiana last year, “Our attorney general, Jeff Landry, sent us all a letter saying, ‘I will put you in jail if you break these rules.’ Literally, I am out to get you, so don’t break these rules. So, you do feel a little bit like there’s a target on your back because you want to do what’s right for the patient.”
On July 29, 2022, after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe but also during a period when a state judge had blocked Louisiana’s abortion ban from taking effect, Landry sent a letter to the Louisiana State Medical Society that said,…
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