Faced with abortion bans, doctors beg hospitals for help with key decisions

[Nevilledog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/28/abortion-bans-medical-exceptions/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/mpoUl

Amelia Huntsberger pulled up a list of the top administrators at her northern Idaho hospital, anxious last fall to confirm she could treat a patient with a potentially life-threatening pregnancy complication.

But it was a Friday afternoon — and no one was picking up.

Huntsberger said she called six administrators before she finally got ahold of someone, her patient awaiting help a few rooms away. When she asked whether she could terminate a pregnancy under Idaho’s new abortion ban — which allows doctors to perform an abortion only if they deem it “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” — the OB/GYN said the decision was punted back to her.

“You know the laws, Amelia,” Huntsberger recalled the administrator saying. “You know what to do.”

If she made the wrong decision, the doctor knew she could face up to five years in prison.

*snip*

[ck4829]

1. As long as there is no legal and physical danger to hospital administrators, they could care less

This makes it crystal clear this is what is going on.

[ShazzieB]

2. I'm pretty sure hospial administrators are more concerned with protecting the hospital than anything else.

I'm not saying it "should" be that way, but that's how it is. In cases where the best interests of staff, patients, and the hospital itself form a mostly overlapping venn diagram, that's not a major problem, but these wildly restrictive abortion laws are creating situations where the needs of patients to receive appropriate care and the needs of doctors to be able to provide that care without going go jail or losing their license to practice medicine are more and more likely to be at odds with the desire of the hospital to stay in good standing with state legislators, protect funding sources, and avoid lawsuits against the institution itself.

If a doctor gets in trouble with the law for exercising their professional judgment in a way that conflicts with one of these laws, they can be replaced. If it can be shown that the doctor was acting in accordance with an official hospital policy, the hospital can be in for a whole bunch of legal trouble and bad press. It's easier for administrators to throw the doctors under the bus than to risk that.

And of course, those who suffer the most are the women.

[ck4829]

3. Well then... time to make it an issue

[progree]

4. "It's trickier now"

The Week 10/27/23, page 6

A New York woman is suing her local hospital, claiming a neurologist refused to prescribe her headache meds because she's "of childbearing age." Tara Rule, who suffers debilitating cluster headaches, told the doctor she was not pregnant and doesn't want children, and so the risk of the drugs causing birth defects was irrelevant. Rule's neurologist allegedly replied that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, "it's trickier now"

I find this particularly scary in that the end of Roe means not just reluctance to treat miscarriages (for example), and other reproductive health issues, but it's affecting even non-reproductive-related issues like headaches

[Farmer-Rick]

5. So now people are seriously suffering thanks to

filthy-rich Harlan Crow. The billionaire inherited his father's business. His father was the largest landlord in the US.

He has been bribing the Supremes on a regular basis and supported them ruling against Roe v Wade and in favor of Christian dogma.

Now people throughout the US can suffer and die from the repurcusions of out of control bribery, superstition and capitalism.