Opinion: I'm an ob-gyn. We're not ready for what will happen if Roe is overturned.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

I’ve been an obstetrician-gynecologist for 24 years, caring for women giving birth, experiencing miscarriage, and deciding to have abortions. Most patients I see have experienced some or all of these events, at different times in their life.

Since abortion is so politicized and stigmatized, it’s often hard to see that it usually coexists alongside birth and miscarriage in many women’s lives, and in the medical practices of their doctors.

I became an ob-gyn to offer compassion and expertise across all these reproductive experiences; I hope my patients have felt that. I didn’t go into medicine to be part of political debates. But I am acutely aware that such debates impact the women and families I care for.

Indeed, as we wait for the outcome of the Supreme Court’s upcoming abortion decision, my colleagues and I are trying to plan ahead for all of the ways the healthcare landscape in Michigan may dramatically shift — not only for women who might seek abortion care, but also for those whose pregnancies end in miscarriage, or for anyone who continues a pregnancy, as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-im-ob-gyn-were-120036855.html

[Girard442]

1. Bottom line: people will suffer and die. They don't care.

[OldBaldy1701E]

3. Yes, but statistically there will be enough warm bodies

To keep their money making ventures running so that they can keep the status quo as it is. That and the display of power over others is why they do this.

[progree]

2. Some, not all of the topics covered

[re: only allowing abortion to "preserve the life" of the mother] Maternal-fetal medicine specialists care for patients with a range of “high-risk” conditions. For patients with pulmonary hypertension, they may cite a 30% to 50% chance of dying with ongoing pregnancy.

Is that high enough to permit abortion? Or must it be 100%?

When oncologists diagnose cancer during pregnancy, some patients end the pregnancy to start treatment immediately; some cancers advance faster due to pregnancy’s extra hormones, and chemotherapy and radiation can cause significant fetal injury.

Will abortion be permissible in this situation, or must patients delay cancer treatment and give birth first? When patients have advanced cancer that was preventable with earlier treatment, increased risk of death may be a few years away.

[re: having to travel out of state] Nationally, half of patients seeking abortions live on incomes under the federal poverty level; another 25% live on just one-to-two times that.

Many cannot afford gas, tolls, hotels. They cannot afford to lose hourly wages or will be fired for missing work.

Most patients I see are already parents. Travel is much harder when you need childcare arrangements, too, especially overnight.

[re: women self-inducing abortions] My colleagues and I will want to steer people toward safe methods, though it’s unclear Michigan’s law will permit such education.

Emergency department and primary care practitioners will need to quickly become familiar with treating abortion complications in this landscape, including complications not seen since before Roe, nearly 50 years ago.

Indeed, all patients who have bleeding in pregnancy or experience pregnancy loss may be vulnerable to criminal prosecution because miscarriage and self-managed abortion are virtually indistinguishable. National data show that healthcare providers disproportionately report Black pregnant patients and those living on low incomes to police.

Mothers will die (abortion is safer than childbirth. Disproportionately Black women)

Healthcare providers will need to decide whether they’ll continue prescribing the best evidence-based medications for miscarriage — mifepristone and misoprostol.

Infertility doctors may stop providing in vitro fertilization given the potential for embryo loss in IVF.