Abortions being denied despite danger
Women facing deadly delays for treatment of complications
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Weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Dr. Grace Ferguson treated a woman whose water had broken halfway through pregnancy. The baby would never survive, and the patient's chance of developing a potentially life-threatening infection grew with every hour.
By the time she made it to Pittsburgh to see Ferguson, the woman had spent two days in a West Virginia hospital, unable to have an abortion because of a state ban. The law makes an exception for medical emergencies, but the patient's life wasn't in danger at that moment.
"She was just kind of standing on the edge of the cliff," Ferguson said, "waiting for an emergency to happen or for the baby to pass away."
In Pennsylvania, at the hospital a four-hour drive away, Ferguson was able to induce labor to end the pregnancy.
A growing number of physicians and families tell similar stories as a post-Roe fear comes to pass: Pregnant women with dangerous medical conditions are showing up in hospitals and doctors' offices only to be denied the abortions that could help treat them. Some doctors in states with restrictive abortion laws say they've referred or suggested more patients go elsewhere than ever. Some women are facing harmful, potentially deadly delays.
Doctors say they're forced to balance medical judgment with potential punishments, including prison time. Although even the strictest laws allow abortion to save a mother's life, a weighty question lingers: How close to death must the patient be?
"You don't automatically go from living to dead," Ferguson said. "You slowly get sicker and sicker."
It's impossible to say when that line is crossed, said Dr. Alison Haddock, who's on the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "There's just no moment where I'm standing in front of a critically ill patient where I know: OK, before, their health was just in danger. But now, their life is in danger," she said.
Experts say it's hard to pinpoint data on abortion denials when serious complications arise. Employers often discourage health care workers from speaking about them, though The Associated Press reached more than a dozen doctors and patients who shared stories of such denials.
And many doctors and researchers agree that evidence, even if largely anecdotal, shows a widespread problem. In Texas, for example, a doctors' association sent a letter to the state's medical board saying some hospitals refused to treat patients with major complications because of the state's abortion ban.
And at the University of California, San Francisco, researchers who invited health care workers nationwide to anonymously send examples of poor-quality care caused by abortion restrictions say they were surprised by the initial volume of responses. Twenty-five submissions came in the first six weeks. Among them were descriptions of patients sent home after their water broke in the second trimester who later returned with serious infections. One told of an ectopic pregnancy that was allowed to grow on a scar left by a previous cesarean section -- which can cause uterine rupture, hemorrhage and death.
"The legislators are playing with fire," said Dr. Dan Grossman, the project's leader.