Will a woman having an ectopic pregnancy in the US have to die ??

[Farmer-Rick]

51. Well, sort of

If it will kill the mother AND you can get a doctor to say that. But here's the thing. Back before Roe v Wade, you couldn't find doctors to put their careers on the line and make that determination.

So, do you have to have 100% certainty or 98% or 60% or 49% that the mother or fetus is going to die? And if you make the wrong call, frequently malpractice insurance wouldn't cover the doctor for abortions even medically necessary ones.

Now, rich people just paid doctors under the table or flew off to Europe to get their much needed abortions. But it was a huge struggle to get a doctor to admit you needed an abortion to save your life if you were middle class. So much so that a lot of women never got their medically necessary abortion because the pregnancy advanced too quickly and oops they died.

Then there are the horror stories of women who had to carry their dead fetuses to birth.... doctors and mother knowing the fetus had died.... because no doctor would admit 100% that the fetus was dead.

Then there are absolutely no exceptions for rape or incest. And many a woman killed herself in those cases. But could you get a doctor to go on record and say the woman was 100% going to kill herself over the horror of carrying their rapist's baby? Not if you were Middle Class.

So maybe the law has some weasel words about death of the mother but in practice no one really cared.