Doctors threatened criminal charges that would endanger patients’ lives in states where abortion is illegal

Abortion bans aim to reduce elective abortions, but they also affect doctors’ medical practice.

This is our most important finding recently. article published in the journal Social Sciences and Medicine.

Medical providers practicing in states that implement the practice abortion Bans after 2022 Dobbs/Jackson Women’s Health In its decision, the Supreme Court is forced to balance the needs of pregnant patients with the risk of providers being prosecuted for treating these patients. This dilemma has serious and far-reaching consequences.

We interviewed 22 healthcare providers working in the area. reproductive health care across Tennessee within six months of the state’s complete ban on abortion in 2022.

Providers spoke to our team about the need to protect themselves from criminal liability and told us they were increasingly hesitant to provide the care their patients needed.

Why is it important?

A 2024 ProPublica investigation found that: at least two women died In Georgia, this is a result of denial of medical care resulting from the implementation of abortion bans. Almost all of the people we interviewed expressed their fear that such deaths might occur.

Providers told us that patients often believe these prohibitions contain exceptions when the pregnant person’s health is at risk, but this is not always true in practice.

Abortion ban in Tennessee It allows “an exception for cases where abortion is necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or to prevent the risk of significant and irreversible impairment of important bodily functions.”

The problem is that such cases rarely come out clearly. And the risks to healthcare providers are very high. In some states, including Tennessee, they can face felony charges that can lead to several years in prison if they are found to have provided an abortion in a situation where the mother’s life or health was not at imminent risk.

In interviews, providers described many cases in which termination of pregnancy was medically necessary for the pregnant person. Handle cases of premature birth premature membrane ruptureIt is the condition in which a pregnant person’s water breaks before the 37th week of pregnancy. Serious complications may follow premature rupture of membranes, especially in cases that do not result in the onset of labor.

The standard treatment for this condition is to induce labor in order to prevent such potential medical complications. However, if the pregnancy is early and the fetus is unlikely to survive outside the womb, this treatment is no longer recommended as the law does not adequately explain what interventions are allowed to protect the pregnant person.

In most cases, the physical harm experienced by the pregnant person is related to the level of legal protection the medical provider receives.

Although doctors are trained to monitor best practices Fear of malpractice charges regarding health care treatment widely documented practice of defensive medicineSituations where providers overperform tests or avoid risks to avoid malpractice lawsuits.

Abortion bans make this dynamic much worse because they often involve the threat of criminal prosecution, which is not covered by malpractice insurance. This exposes providers to a new form of risk; this shapes how providers interact with patients and deliver care.

Our team calls this new form of defensive medicine “unstable medicine.” Providers are forced to prioritize their own criminal legal protections over the well-being of their patients, so they hesitate to provide the treatment patients need. Ambiguous prohibitions on when a healthcare provider can intervene during a pregnancy complication further increases hesitation.

What’s next?

It will take years for researchers to obtain data showing how abortion bans affect women’s reproductive health. But our interviews show that these bans are already shaping how healthcare providers treat pregnant people.

The majority of those we interviewed had considered moving to a state without an abortion ban to practice medicine with much less stress about the threat of criminal prosecution. a trend currently occurring. Over time, this migration of providers can worsen the situation. health deserts problem In the United States.

To mitigate some of this harm, medical associations, employers, and legislatures need to do more to clarify or revise the Tennessee “Human Life Protection Act” to better protect women’s health.

This article is republished from: Speech It is under Creative Commons license. Read original article.