Dear SCOTUS, Look What You Have Done
The unintended consequences that could affect the election
If you feel like this radical-right packed Supreme Court has an obsession with abortion cases, you’re not alone. Here we go again, as the court heard oral arguments today in an Idaho case that could have huge ramifications nationwide.
The case is about whether federal law allows emergency room doctors to perform abortions on expectant mothers in crisis, despite Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. To enable emergency access to abortion in states with bans like Idaho, the Biden administration argued the 10-year-old Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act should permit doctors to perform all emergency services, including abortions. But what is considered a crisis? Doctors in Idaho are reluctant to provide emergency services to pregnant women because, under state law, they can be jailed. The only abortions allowed in Idaho are if the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
We took note of an Associated Press report last week that detailed horrific instances of women being turned away from hospitals in other states:
“A Texas woman who miscarried in a restroom toilet in a Houston freestanding emergency room lobby after the front desk staff refused to check her in. Her husband, meanwhile, called 911 for help.”
“Other stories included a woman in North Carolina with stomach pain who was denied an ultrasound and was not informed about the extent of the risk to her health if she left the hospital without being stabilized. She gave birth to her baby while en route to another hospital 45 minutes away. The baby later died.”
As a reminder, the Supreme Court overturned the federally protected right to an abortion with its June 2022 Dobbs decision. Since then, 21 states have significantly restricted abortion access. Some justices had hoped Dobbs would push any future decisions about the controversial issue to the states. Instead, several abortion cases are now before the court, all to be decided in the middle of the presidential campaign.
Donald Trump, who appointed three far-right Supreme Court justices, has proudly taken credit for the Dobbs decision. “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade … Without me, there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to.”
Since that statement almost two years ago, the body politic has made its collective voice heard on the issue, and now some Republicans are walking back their overtly anti-choice stances. Even Trump now claims he won’t support a national abortion ban.
And just today, fearing political retribution at the ballot box, the Republican-controlled House in Arizona, one of the 21 states with restrictions, voted to repeal that state’s near-total ban.
More Republican-led state houses should take note of a plethora of unintended consequences that have come from the reversal of Roe.
Most, if not all, of the states that have severely restricted abortion since Dobbs have seen huge numbers of obstetricians leave their states. A nationwide shortage of gynecologists and obstetricians makes the exodus even more dire. Idaho has lost 22% of its OB-GYNs since 2022. A term has been coined to describe this unforeseen phenomenon: maternity care deserts. Almost 7 million American women now have low or no access to maternal health care — that includes an estimated 500,000 births. In the United States. In 2024.
In the we-should-have-seen-that-one-coming category, according to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh, since Dobbs, doctors have performed a significant increase in procedures that cause permanent contraception. More men are choosing to get vasectomies, and twice as many women are opting for tubal sterilization. If our citizens, especially women, are being told they cannot have control over their reproductive health, many have decided to take away the possibility of reproducing altogether. Before Dobbs, the U.S. birth rate was at an all-time low. It has dropped even further since June 2022.
And finally, a counterintuitive consequence that I am sure the anti-reproductive freedom crowd did not expect. Abortion rates in the United States are at their highest levels in more than a decade. Last year saw a 10% increase in abortions nationwide. In states without bans, the increase was 25%. The reason for the rise in abortions, even though it's nearly impossible to get one in almost half the country, is three-fold. Since Dobbs, medication abortions are more widely available, the financial support for those seeking abortions has increased, and states where abortion is legal have improved protections.
The right to abortion has been a hot-button issue for more than 50 years. Those opposed to allowing women to make their own medical decisions were incredibly myopic when they relentlessly pushed to overturn Roe. To their peril, they also did not anticipate the passion and strength of the pro-choice movement, which may just propel Joe Biden to a second term.
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I would like Samuel Alito to have the experience of being in medical crisis and having to beg a politician for his life. Especially if that politician will win more votes if he dies.
Let’s talk about EMTALA. My husband was an emergency medicine physician and the Medical Director of the emergency department and I a retired ICU nurse. Before EMTALA, a hospital that was a money grubber ( I can name names in Seattle) could do a “wallet biopsy” on a woman coming to the ED with an incomplete spontaneous abortion of a wanted pregnancy, who is bleeding heavily. If she fails the test (no insurance and no money) they could tell her they didn’t have the facilities to care for her and send her to another hospital that provides charity care. They felt no obligation to save her life…. This is the hospital not the ED doctor’s decision.
People died and EMTALA was a method to prevent this practice we called “dumping”. Doctors and nurses have an ethical obligation to care for people who need our help. Even retired I honor my oath and help anyone who asks for my help and my husband did too.
Any hospital ( pretty much every one), that receives any federal funds, must stabilize the patient before they can transfer the patient to another facility. This patient would need a D&C (like an abortion) before she could be transferred. Then she would be stable and not in danger of bleeding out.
There is not a single justice on the Supreme Court qualified to decide this. They don’t know that we have a saying “to not let the sun set on an ectopic pregnancy” it is too dangerous for the woman. They don’t know how fast a woman can bleed out from an incomplete spontaneous abortion. As a professional and as a woman, mother and grandmother, I am outraged. We cannot wait until November, women will die.