Woman with Cancerous Pregnancy Was Told to Wait in Parking Lot Until She Was 'Crashing' [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://jezebel.com/woman-with-cancerous-pregnancy-was-told-to-wait-in-park-1850375358

Jaci Statton, a 25-year-old mother of three based in Central Oklahoma, was expecting her fourth child when she began feeling dizzy, weak, and especially nauseous toward the end of February. By mid-March, she experienced an episode of heavy bleeding, and she and her husband rushed to an emergency room, where they learned she had a nonviable, molar pregnancy—which occurs when an embryo has too many chromosomes and can result in the developing tissue becoming cancerous. In most cases, the condition is benign—but in 15% of cases, including Statton’s, molar pregnancies can be cancerous.

Speaking to NPR for a story published on Tuesday, Statton recalled traveling to numerous hospitals to seek an emergency dilation and curettage (or D&C) abortion procedure—the treatment for her life-threatening condition. Her emergency room doctor told her she was at risk of hemorrhage and even death, but that the hospital couldn’t provide treatment. Over the course of a week, she was transferred to three different hospitals. The last hospital instructed Statton to wait in the parking lot for her condition to worsen before they could legally treat her, she claimed. “They said, ‘The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack,’” Statton told NPR.

Oklahoma currently has three active abortion bans, which have conflicting exceptions and guidelines around medical emergencies in which abortion is appropriate, reproductive rights advocacy groups explained in a new study published Tuesday. Under these laws, abortion providers are threatened with prison time. As a result, many hospitals in the state have expressed confusion about whether and under what circumstances they can offer emergency abortion care: The study surveyed 34 hospitals in the state on their policies surrounding pregnancy complications and emergency abortion care. Per its findings, four hospitals disclosed that doctors must seek approval to provide emergency abortions; 14 hospitals were unable to provide clear answers about whether they even had an approval process for emergency abortions; and three of the hospitals said they wouldn’t provide abortion under any circumstances.

“These devastating findings from Oklahoma are consistent with accounts we are hearing from patients and health care professionals in other abortion ban states,” Risa Kaufman, director of U.S. human rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Jezebel in a statement. “These bans undermine the ability and freedom of patients and their providers to make safe, evidence-based health care decisions.”

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