Doctors rally in Missouri to demand changes on abortion

WITH: NATANYA FRIEDHEIM

Doctor David Mehr addressed a dozen voters gathered at the Missourians’ Center for Constitutional Freedom Saturday morning; The coalition behind the proposed amendment would enshrine the right to abortion in Missouri’s constitution.

Meanwhile, doctors are in St. Petersburg as part of the coalition’s last voting campaign before the November 5 elections. He greeted volunteers in St. Louis County and more gathered in Kansas City.

“I have cared about women my entire life,” Mehr told her volunteer group at Columbia. “It is important that this decision remains between the woman and her doctor.”

Mehr works for the University of Missouri Health Services but spoke individually, not on behalf of the hospital.

An hour later, he was wandering through the bushes in a northwest Columbia neighborhood, looking for the right door to knock on. By the end of the day, he and his campaign partner had knocked on 44 doors.

Like other states where abortion is prohibited, Missouri’s state law makes exceptions in “medical emergencies.” Medical professionals who perform abortions deemed unnecessary may be found guilty of a Class B felony and their licenses may be revoked or suspended.

“There is no definition of what a medical emergency might be,” said Betsy Wickstrom, a high-risk obstetrician who practices in Kansas City. “So if my patient is bleeding and her cervix is ​​dilated and she still has cardiac activity, how long do I need to let her bleed?”

Wickstrom chose not to disclose the hospital connection. His reluctance led to St. Louis on Saturday. It was also shared by doctors gathered in St. Louis and reflects a trend found in a 2023 study of doctors to keep their workplaces private when talking about abortion.

Last month, a group of 800 medical professionals, including 500 doctors from Missouri, signed a letter supporting the abortion rights amendment, which appears on the ballot as Amendment 3.

No doctor has been criminally prosecuted in any state for performing an abortion during a medical emergency, according to an article published last month by the Association of American Medical Colleges. But doctors across the country have warned that a lack of clarity about what constitutes a medical emergency is jeopardizing their ability to perform emergency abortions.

In August, a group of OB/GYN medical assistants in Missouri published an article anonymously in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education describing the shock and fear they experienced entering the profession in a state where abortion is strictly prohibited.

“Because the statute reads so punitively, it has instilled fear in clinicians and resulted in life-saving care being unnecessarily delayed or outright denied,” the authors wrote.

Since abortion became illegal in Missouri in 2022, the state has seen a more than 25% decline in applications for the medical specialty of obstetrics and gynecology, according to a May report from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

In a widely publicized case in 2022, two hospitals, including one in Missouri, turned away Missourian Mylissa Farmer when she sought help when her water broke just 18 weeks into her pregnancy. Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid found that two hospitals — Freeman Hospital West in Joplin and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas — violated federal law by denying Farmer care.

Since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, numerous other examples of women being denied emergency medical care have appeared in the news media.

Health experts who oppose abortion argue that media reports support an exaggerated narrative that abortion bans jeopardize women’s access to emergency care.

“All state laws allow fetal separation from the mother (by whatever means necessary) to save the mother’s life,” said Christina Francis, American Obstetrician and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians. he wrote in testimony at a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing in September.

Decisions in medicine are rarely black and white. Wickstrom said abortion is the standard of care when a woman’s water breaks so early that the viability of the fetus is eliminated. When the woman approaches the 20th week, factors such as bleeding, signs of infection, and the amount of amniotic fluid in the uterus are taken into account.

Some women want to wait, and the doctor guides the patient in this choice.

“Of course we do this because the choice is what matters. The point is, his body will decide what’s right for him, and we come alongside him, support him, and guide him on what’s right for him,” Wickstrom said.

If a woman does not want to continue with an unviable pregnancy, the fetus has a heartbeat and her condition is not considered an emergency, she should leave the state for an abortion, Wickstrom said. Kansas City and St. In St. Louis, women can more easily access clinics that offer abortion care in Kansas and Illinois than clinics in mid-Missouri.

Wickstrom brings his metal water bottle to work at a hospital in Kansas City. When she talks to patients, she displays it so they can see the stickers on it: Just above Taylor Swift’s incision is a sticker that says “ABORTION RESOURCES,” followed by a list of phone numbers and website URLs.

Wickstrom said she has a hard time talking openly with women with high-risk pregnancies about their options.

“You should dance around this place more,” he said, “because the waters are muddy.”

This story was first from Columbia Missouri. May be republished in print or online.