“Imagine you\u2019re eight months pregnant, and you wake up in the middle of the night to a bolt of pain across your belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terrified you might be losing your pregnancy, you rush to the emergency room \u2014 only to be told that no one there will care for you<\/a>, because they\u2019re worried they could be accused of participating in an abortion. The staff tells you to drive to another hospital, but that will take hours, by which time, it might be too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such frightening experiences are growing more common in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health<\/em> decision<\/a>, as doctors and other medical staff, fearful of the far-reaching effects of state abortion bans, are simply refusing to treat pregnant people at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s part of what some reproductive health activists see as a disturbing progression from bans on abortion to a climate of suspicion around all pregnant patients. \u201cPeople are increasingly scared even to be pregnant,\u201d said Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at the reproductive justice legal group If\/When\/How.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fall of Roe<\/em> has led to an ever-widening net of criminalization that can ensnare doctors, nurses, and pregnant people alike, leading to devastating consequences for patients\u2019 health, experts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Complaints of pregnant women turned away from emergency rooms doubled in the months after Dobbs<\/em>, the Associated Press reported<\/a> earlier this year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Dobbs<\/em> decision has created an environment in which people experiencing miscarriage are treated as criminals or crimes waiting to happen, advocates say \u2014 or sometimes both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October 2023, an Ohio woman named Brittany Watts visited a hospital<\/a>, 21 weeks pregnant and bleeding. Doctors determined that her water had broken early and her fetus would not survive, but since her pregnancy was approaching the point at which Ohio bans abortions<\/a>, a hospital ethics panel kept her waiting for eight hours while they debated what to do. She eventually returned home, miscarried, tried to dispose of the fetal remains herself, and was charged with felony abuse of a corpse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The charges were ultimately dropped<\/a>, but experts say her case is part of a larger pattern.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n