A new report from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project alleges that pregnant patients have received substandard care in the year leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The report, which is the first of its kind, details 50 anonymized cases submitted by healthcare providers across the United States. Among the findings are complications related to abortion bans, including patients with life-threatening pregnancies being turned away from hospitals. Other complications include denial and delay of care, including cases where patients were unable to terminate pregnancies due to fetal abnormalities or were delayed in getting drugs needed to treat early miscarriages.
The report also highlights the difficulty that healthcare providers face in navigating abortion bans. Due to vagueness in the legal language, many doctors do not feel they can safely perform abortions in high-risk situations. There is also a lack of guidance from hospitals and healthcare systems, leaving doctors unsure of what to do. As a result, the majority of respondents reported early premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) as the most common complication among patients. Previously, doctors in any state could offer to induce or perform abortion surgery in cases of PPROM with low viability. However, since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many doctors no longer offer this option to their patients, putting them at risk of developing infections or bleeding.
The report’s lead author, Daniel Grossman, suggests that in some cases, doctors may be able to legally perform abortions based on medical exceptions, but the language of the law is too vague, leaving providers reluctant to take any legal risks. Grossman suggests that one solution could be for anti-abortion lawmakers to provide a list of conditions that doctors can legally treat. However, he believes that such a list can never be comprehensive enough to cover every potential complication that may arise. Rep. Robin Bartleman did introduce an amendment explicitly permitting doctors to induce or perform abortions on pregnant women with PPROM but it was voted down.