Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, eliminating constitutional right to abortion

A total miscarriage of justice.

Happy Friday folks!

 

hey Siri teach me about miscarriages.

 

Hmm. 11+1=12. 12<15. There is something wrong with someone's math.

I don't understand the disconnect between the exceptions and the effectiveness. If the woman is not facing actual life-threatening complications, how would an exception to protect the life of the mother apply? It seems obvious that someone's life would need to be in jeopardy for a law based on saving that life to apply.

 

Math is fine. The 15-week Mississippi abortion ban was the law that went to the Supreme Court. Ten days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, abortion in Mississippi is illegal and the only abortion clinic in Mississippi closed. This happens under the 'trigger law' that was fully expected by the Supreme Court. For someone following this closely, I thought you were aware. Mississippi is one of 13 states that had a 'trigger law' in place waiting for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.

Your confusion is normal for someone not understanding the basic medical nuances of care. The problem is that serious complications can arise unexpectedly and progress rapidly during pregnancy, putting a woman's life at grave risk. Doctors may identify signs a patient is high risk, but it's not always possible to definitively predict if or when a life-threatening emergency could occur. With the risk of imprisonment if abortion is restricted, doctors are forced to wait until the woman's life is actively in danger before performing an abortion, even if earlier intervention with an abortion could have prevented the crisis. For example, a woman with heart problems may show signs of cardiac distress that will worsen as the pregnancy progresses, but doctors have to wait until she is having a heart attack or stroke before acting. This puts the woman at much higher risk of disability or death. While laws may include life exceptions on paper, the reality is they force doctors into a terrible bind between offering substandard, risky care versus facing criminal penalties. This is the reality.

Here are real world cases in the recent TX lawsuits:

• Amanda Zurawski was denied an abortion after her water broke at 18 weeks, even though she showed signs of a life-threatening infection. She had to spend 3 days in the ICU fighting for her life before doctors performed an emergency abortion.
• Lauren Miller was pregnant with twins but one had a fatal condition. At 12 weeks, doctors denied her a procedure to reduce to a single healthy fetus, forcing her to travel out of state while still facing risks from her condition.
• Anna Zargarian's water broke at 19 weeks but Texas bans blocked her from getting an abortion. She had to fly to Colorado despite risks of going into labor mid-flight.
• Jessica Bernardo's 14-week scan showed fetal abnormalities. Her doctor helped arrange an out-of-state abortion using coded language to avoid penalties. She described it as the worst trauma of her life.
• Elizabeth Weller's water broke at 19 weeks but hospital staff refused to act until she developed a serious infection, forcing her to wait for the fetus to die inside her. She felt the state punished her for a failed pregnancy.

 

To follow up on the post above. Medical situations can change rapidly. For a hypothetical a they’re a class of drugs that are very powerful at breaking clots but they also cause a lot of bleeding. If someone is suffering a stroke it could be either because a clot is cutting off blood flow to the brain or they are bleeding in the brain administering a clot buster could save them or it could kill them faster. A doctor will rely on a CT scan to determine that but if it doesn’t appear like there is time for that has to make a judgment call.

With laws like in TX they are adding a layer of regulation to the doctor. Let’s say TX had a regulation that you can’t administer a clot buster without a CT scan. In a situation a doctor could hesitate relying on their own judgment and that hesitation could lead to death of the patient. In the same way an abortion could be medically necessary but the doctor hesitates because of the law.

 

It seems strange to mention the 15 week ban at all, given it was not the operative law.

Yes. You cannot take action that is only allowed as a lifesaving measure until and unless a life threatening condition arises. You are allowed to shoot someone if they are an imminent threat to you, but you are not allowed to shoot someone if they have the conditions (like being armed) that may or may not make them a deadly threat to you in the future. The doctors should wait until there is actual endangerment of life, because that is what the law requires. Any pregnancy carries the potential to be dangerous, but if that were enough the exception would swallow the rule.

 

My point I was trying to make, perhaps not as well as I could, was that many medical conditions can change rapidly. Someone can be stable one second and then be critical the next. That’s why medical
Decisions require a lot of judgment and requiring doctors to second guess themselves because of regulation isn’t necessarily a good thing.

 

It's literally "putting the government between you and your doctor" that conservatives railed against for years when it came to expanded insurance coverage.

It's almost as if that argument was disingenuous.

 

Its almost as if they really don't care about the health or life of the mother. Some might even argue they really don't care of the health or life of the unborn fetus either...

 

But ... but ... @StupidMoniker MD knows best!!!

 

Why no compassion for the woman whose child isn't viable in these real world scenarios? Why must her life be in danger before an abortion, which will be the end result in these situations, is administered when the child is already dead? What is the state's interest in torturing these women?

 

The context for the 15 weeks was that the 15-week abortion ban law from Mississippi is what the Supreme Court ruled on to overturn Roe. Before that, abortion was legal with many exceptions. Afterward, in many states, abortion is not legal with some exceptions.

That self defense analogy doesn't work. The woman is asking for the service from medical professionals to save her from major health issues or death, not a woman performing an act of self-protection against a criminal.

You are stating that the laws with exceptions for life in danger are saying the woman must be in an actively life-threatening condition for an abortion to take place. I'm not going to argue what the law meant. But to be clear, is your position (not what the law said) that a woman's life must be in active danger (eg. if a woman will have a heart attack, doctor can't do anything until the heart attack is happening) for an abortion to be allowed?

 

Trying for a better analogy. I think it would be if a doctor saw a women with four of her heart arteries clogged and with very high blood pressure but wasn’t suffering a heart attack at they moment. Could the doctor treat her with an arterial stent or would they have to wait until she was having an actual heart attack.

in many of the examples you cited the fetus was either dead or dying and there was a high risk of complications to the mother from waiting to abortion. Under the argument presented is that the doctor would have to wait until it got to the actual post of complications to the mothers health occurring until they could take action.

 

There are major issues with these laws that ban abortions but with an exception for life.

1- It doesn't clearly define what "exception for life" means.
2- The definition is left up to the government. If the government doesn't agree, prosecution happens and it goes to court.
3- Thus, even the assumption that a woman is in "active danger" of death is debatable.
4- It's not possible to list every single instance of "active danger" of death.

So, at the end of the day, the government has the power to decide (usually the AG) if the DR violated the law.

You can see why many DRs are very afraid to do anything except play it extremely safe (and even with that, there is always a risk that an AG may disagree).

Results: Woman are harmed. Child abuse.

 

Yes, you would think, but that's even debatable. See my previous post.

 

I understand the point, I am saying that you cannot assume that the medical condition is going to change, and call something a lifesaving measure based on what you assume will happen (or really, what you think might happen). The same analogy of someone with a gun goes directly to this point. Conditions can change extremely rapidly. One second he is walking around with a gun in his holster, and then the next second he is shooting at you. You cannot shoot him just for walking around with the gun in his holster, but you can once the threat is imminent. One is murder, the other is self-defense. That's what a life saving exception means, you have to wait until the threat is imminent.

If the child is already dead, it isn't an abortion (legally speaking, there are various medical definitions) and none of the abortion laws apply. Of course a woman should not be forced to carry a dead baby inside of her, what would be the point of that?

Since there is no law against installing a stent unless a heart attack is occurring, that would be fine.

 

If the mother is in the process of an 18-week miscarriage upon which her child will be born dead why should she be made to suffer to the point of sepsis before having a medically-necessary abortion performed? What is the state's interest in making a woman go through that, while potentially affecting her future fertility, if the end result - a tragically dead child - is the same whether or not an abortion was performed before the mother's life was medically in danger?

I don't understand why a woman who wants a child, but whose body is terminating the pregnancy, should be forced to suffer more than she already is because her child may not be dead yet according to the state's guidelines.

 

As you understand terms like “imminent” are subjective. That is why self defense laws are framed as being what a “reasonable” person would consider an “imminent threat”. For example in the case of Trayvon Martin it was determined Zimmerman shot him while Zimmerman was in his back and Martin was standing. In that moment Martin was no longer attacking him. What they jury agreed to was that since Martin had struck him earlier there was a likelihood of him continuing to strike Zimmerman constituting a threat. In that case what is “immenent” doesn’t mean the exact moment.

In the case of what what we are discussing we can presume that a doctor would exercise reasonable judgment regarding the likely occurrence of harm to the mother even if such occurrence wasn’t of that moment. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that the threat to the mother is imminent so that a doctor shouldn’t need to wait for the threat to the health of the mother to actually manifest itself?

Is the legal definition of abortion differentiate between whether the fetus is alive or dead and how does it define that? I really don’t know but if it is just the artificial removal before birth then wouldn’t that then require a women to carry a stillborn fetus?

It was meant to be an example say for instance stents were outlawed except in incidences of an actual heart attack. My example though illustrates how while the situation isn’t happening at that moment it is imminent.

 

Issue is that states have been pushing the narrative that anything less than have already been shot and bleeding out will you be justified to shoot back. Because they believe that society is rampant in people shooting anything that moves for the fun of it and using a threat excuse to do it.

This is what happens when you go from a reasonable ruling under Roe to an unclear one, but the messaging is strong.

 

Unfortunately, society is rampant with abortions being done without the life of the mother being endangered, approaching a million per year. If a million people were being shot and killed in self-defense per year in the United States, people would be looking at those claimed self-defense situations with a high degree of skepticism.