Texas is being accused of’judge-shopping’ in cases against Biden
The Arizona Planned Parenthood Abortion Law is Good for the Health Care System and for the Medical Community: A Report to the Arizona Court of Appeals
Fonteno said that today is a good day. “The Arizona Court of Appeals has given us the clarity that Planned Parenthood Arizona has been seeking for months: When provided by licensed physicians in compliance with Arizona’s other laws and regulations, abortion through 15 weeks will remain legal.”
Attorneys for Planned Parenthood had argued that Arizona courts had a responsibility to try to harmonize all of the state’s relevant statutes.
The court concluded the balance of hardships was in favor of granting the stay, given the need of healthcare providers, prosecuting agencies and the public for legal clarity as to the application of our criminal laws.
“Our office understands that this is an emotional issue, and we will carefully review the court’s ruling before determining the next step,” Thomason said.
“Today’s decision provides a desperately needed sense of security for both our patients and providers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “We can now breathe a sigh of relief and serve patients. While the fight isn’t over, for now, Arizonans will once again be able to make their own decisions about their bodies, health care decisions, and futures.”
The law was temporarily suspended in Ohio and was set to expire next week. The decision means that the state’s abortion ban is suspended, giving abortion providers more certainty as the court case proceeds.
The legal reality of abortion changes frequently and unexpectedly in my home state of Ohio. In 2019, Governor Mike DeWine (who is up for reelection next month) signed a law banning abortion after early cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks into a pregnancy (before many women even know they are pregnant). The law was put on hold by a federal judge who believed it would likely be ruled unconstitutional.
Brnovich sought to place that lawsuit on hold until the Court of Appeals decides the Planned Parenthood case. In an agreement with the abortion doctor and the medical association, he said he would not enforce the old law until at least 45 days after a final ruling in the original case.
Abortion rights advocates have long argued that Arizona’s differing abortion laws confuse patients and health care providers.
The appeals court said Planned Parenthood has shown it is likely to prevail on its argument that the trial court erred by limiting its analysis only to the attorney general’s request to lift the 50-year-old injunction and refusing to consider the later laws passed by the Legislature to regulate abortion.
This week, a doctor and an abortion rights group filed suit to block the oldlaw, raising the same arguments that Johnson had rejected. There may be questions about conflicting laws, but they weren’t properly before her.
For anyone who provides an abortion, the law carries stiff penalties of 10 to 15 years in jail, $100,000 to $200,000 in fines and the loss of a physician’s medical license if convicted of performing an abortion.
One Phoenix clinic has come up with a workaround to allow patients who can use abortions pills to get them delivered to the California-Arizona border for pickup. That cuts the time it takes to get abortion pills, which are effective up to 12 weeks gestation, from a two-day trip to one that can be done in a day.
“We’re not afraid of hearing about abortion,” recalls a woman who was told by her physician about a gray area in Louisiana’s law
She remembers the woman on the phone saying that since the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and with what the woman called a gray area in Louisiana’s law, the group was delaying the first prenatal appointment with patients.
She said a physician in a leadership position at the hospital was disappointed that they’d had to say no to the journalist’s request to embed at their hospital. She said the doctor told her that they have to stop muzzling physicians. I want to make sure that our voices are heard. “
A PR official with the New York Times asked the doctor not to comment at this time, after he sent along the questions and answers.
The doctor said she would only speak to CNN because her employer would prefer her to stay quiet about abortion, making her a target for reprisals.
Not all doctors agree that the abortion restrictions are responsible for harming patients. Dr. Christine Francis of the American Association of Pro-Life Ob-Gyns, has written that the suggestion that these laws interfere with the treatment of miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other life-threatening conditions is “absurd.”
Dr. Rosha McCoy, acting chief health care officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said medical centers and universities are having to deal with a great deal of “fear” and “confusion” in the aftermath of new abortion limitations.
“Not because doctors are inappropriate or bad people, but because they’re confused about what they can and cannot do,” she says. “And they’re also scared about what the consequences may be if they break these extremely confusing laws.”
In Missouri, hospital doctors told a woman whose water broke at 18 weeks that “current Missouri law supersedes our medical judgment” and so she could not receive an abortion procedure even though she was at risk of infection, according to a report in the Springfield News-Leader.
The doctor, who works at a public university, said that they had to watch patients deteriorated in front of their eyes.
I’m afraid of losing my job, but I can’t afford it, nor do I feel guilty about it,” a University Medical Director told CNN
This was clearly done to make us feel like criminals. That’s exactly how it makes us feel – like we’re doing something wrong,” she said. I think we are all scared. I’m afraid of losing my job. Losing my job would be significant because I am the primary earner in my family.
The doctor told CNN that at this meeting, it was intimidating that “these very fancy, very high-level, high-powered administrators had watched a video The event was important to make sure I didn’t make a connection to my employer.
“I got the strong sense they’ll say no,” they said. “They worry about state funding sources and what happens if it gets controversial, so unfortunately instead of supporting us, they want everyone to play nice and quiet and not stir up any trouble.”
According to a survey by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, clinicians sometimes avoid standard abortion procedures, opting instead for hysterotomy because it might not be construed as an abortion.
The doctor said that a university official told the people to take the photo out of their personal social media accounts, despite the statements from respected national organizations. The doctor added that a little bit later, the official told the residents they could post the picture on their own accounts, as long as they didn’t identify where they work.
The doctor said that lawyers gave a presentation about the limits of free speech to the residents a month later. CNN has seen a portion of the presentation.
The doctor said residents are hesitant to make trouble because they rely on senior colleagues to make calls for them, and they won’t find a position if they are seen as difficult.
Medical Center Newsroom: The UT Southwestern High-Risk Maternal-Fetal Medicine Department spoke with Two Top Oncologists
In the past year, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has issued more than 150 news releases about advances in the lab, studies conducted by its doctors, awards for its researchers, and many other topics.
Last month, CNN contacted one of the study authors but she said they needed to reach out to the university’s media office.
CNN then received this response from the medical center’s director of public relations: “UT Southwestern continues to review the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in conjunction with Texas laws and will not be commenting at this time. The results speak for themselves.
CNN reached out to two oncologists at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, one of the largest cancer centers in the US, to ask them about their experiences treating pregnant patients, considering that Texas has had strict abortion limitations for more than a year.
According to MD Anderson’s statement, the providers discuss the data with the patients and then referred them to fetal medicine specialists for treatment if they were pregnant.
On October 7, CNN pressed further to speak with the doctors, and an associate vice president said they were working on coordinating the interviews, but none was made available prior to the deadline for this story.
The society for maternal-Fetal medicine has experts in high-risk pregnancies, and Wade is their chief public affairs officer. Wade was approached by a reporter from The New York Times Magazine who was interested in putting a photographer in the high-risk maternal-fetal medicine department.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/health/abortion-doctors-talking/index.html
Patients are the worst doctors in the world, and there is no room for them to complain. “Medical Disobedience can be very painful,” she says
When people do not hear these stories, they don’t understand what these laws are doing to people, and I think people are suffering. She said that people need to hear that.
She said the hospitals and practices that declined The New York Times’ invitation told her that “this would make our attorneys and public relations colleagues very nervous.’ There are words.
“There is a part of me that understands that as these laws continue to change rapidly, [for hospitals] to interpret what can be done and can’t be done varies in some places day to day. She said that she could understand someone taking a cautious approach, since they might see the world that way.
She and other maternal-fetal medicine specialists had a call from their hospital’s administrators after the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
But on the call, “it became pretty clear that [the medical center] was not going to take a particularly activist approach” and would not make it easy for doctors to describe the impact of the new laws to the public.
“People cried on that call – like 40-, 50-year-old women were in tears when they realized the extent to which the institution was going to make this difficult,” she said.
The people who come to me are already facing problems they couldn’t have planned for, because I specialize in high-risk patients. I think about the mother who is carrying twins and faces the dilemma of whether to have one or both babies. A scared 21 year old with a life-threatening infection that developed two days after her water broke too early.
There might be a middle ground between going to jail and not providing the care doctors think is needed, according to a bioethicist and professor at the medical school. In many of the reported cases in which patients were endangered because doctors denied or delayed necessary care, she says civil disobedience wasn’t called for. Instead, doctors need to become more comfortable working up to the limits of the law.
Every time I am forced to turn a patient away, that burning candle inside me, once a roaring and passionate fire in a young student excited to embark upon a career of helping others, dims ever so slightly. This serious breach of my duty as a physician is not easily recovered from, even when I am powerless to do otherwise.
Doctors have to consider not only their decision, but also that of someone else. “How is somebody else going to interpret that later? How is law enforcement or a prosecutor going to think about that?
But I still experience joy in my job sometimes. The trembling hands of a college student, suddenly still after swallowing the first pill of their medication abortion regimen, whispering with increasing confidence, “I’m going to be ok.” The tears of a transplant recipient dry when she knows she won’t have to go back on the transplant list when her already tenuous kidney fails again during another pregnancy.
A single mom no longer has to worry about an unwanted pregnancies or being stuck with a career that she doesn’t want now that she can focus on her family. I take some comfort from knowing that the shattered hearts of Tara and Justin – who desperately wanted the baby they had to say goodbye to – can finally start to heal now, knowing they did what was right for Tara’s health and spared their baby, who could not have lived, a short lifetime of pain.
Probing the Medical Ethics and Standards of Care with Abortion in Wisconsin and the U.S.: A View from a Workplace for Doctors, Patients and Physicians
Patients should be allowed to simply be patients, to make medical decisions that align with their faith, family needs and their health, without interference from the government. They should be able to receive accessible, compassionate care regardless of what state they live in. And doctors should be allowed to simply be doctors. I should be free to care for my patients without fear of repercussions.
The health outcomes in 26 abortion-restricting states were compared with those in the remaining 24 states and the District of Columbia, which seem to be unlikely to pass such restrictions.
Clinics in states like Colorado, Illinois and New York have also seen more patients as women travel out of state for abortions. Practical reasons make sense in favor of the shift to telemedicine. It’s as safe to have an abortion at home with pills as it is to go to a clinic.
The pre-statehood law, which allows abortions only if a patient’s life is in jeopardy, had been blocked from being enforced shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing women a constitutional right to an abortion.
“That’s just nuts,” Dr. Matthew Wynia says. He’s a physician who directs the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado. A hysterotomy is more dangerous than an abortion because the woman might never have another baby if you’re accused of having done an abortion.
Three Wisconsin doctors have joined the lawsuit challenging the law. In affidavits shared with NPR, they say the law and the fear of prosecution has made it harder to provide necessary and appropriate care in Wisconsin.
He says that the resolution to support the doctors who provide abortions in keeping with medical ethics and standards of care is a good first step. Those policies give direction to a task force to provide policies, legal strategies and financial resources, but there is no timeline for more details on what shape that will take.
She told a congressional subcommittee in the summer that Ob-Gyns’ medical expertise and years of training made it possible for them to intervene to save a woman’s life.
“By the 1940s, you get more of a crackdown on abortion, and it’s framed as a vice or a racket — the same language you’d be using against organized crime,” says Ziegler. “In the 1950s, hospitals begin forming therapeutic abortion committees in part to protect themselves from prosecution or lawsuits,” she says, so abortions could be allowed in certain circumstances, like emergencies.
Then, in the 1960s, in the period leading up to Roe v. Wade, “some people then begin not just getting arrested because they happen to get caught, but trying to get arrested,” she says, as a way to draw attention to what they saw as vague or unworkable abortion laws.
In Washington D.C., Dr. Milan Vuitch was arrested 16 times for providing illegal abortions. In 1967, Leon Belous was found guilty for giving a woman a referral for an abortion. His case was appealed to the supreme court and he won.
According to the Ob-Gyn, who provides abortions in Indiana, just going to work in the morning can endanger her life if that law is blocked by the courts. NPR has reported on increased threats to abortion clinics and providers in recent years.
“There is no way that I would risk my personal freedom and jail time for providing medical care,” McHugh says. I don’t want to be a civil-disobedient citizen, but our society doesn’t want me to be and I would lose my license if I did that. and I very well could be assassinated for doing that work.”
For these reasons, she’s skeptical of calls to openly defy abortion laws and invite arrest. King says that he doesn’t see the point. She adds that another consideration is how few providers there are who do abortion care — any doctor who’s sitting in jail or waiting for a legal fight to resolve is one fewer person who’s able to take care of patients.
She explained that when you believe a law is unjust, do not believe disobeying it in public will change it, but there is an identifiable other in danger in front of you and you have resources to help. There’s a long tradition of the Underground Railroad being used to hide Jews from the Nazis.
Physicians aren’t afraid to ask for more restrictions on abortion: a testimony of Petranek’s mother, Danielle, in Wisconsin, and another mother with three children
Some abortion providers are taking that kind of approach. “They’ve got all these referral systems and they’re sending patients around to different places to get care,” King says. “They’re mobilizing and [doctors] are moving and practicing in different states.”
Ultimately, health care workers need more institutional support in the face of laws they may feel are pushing them to violate their ethical obligations, says Wynia.
O’Donnell is from Texas Alliance for Life, one of the groups that lobbies for abortion restrictions. She says that her group is not currently advocating for more restrictions. “What we’re working for in this session is maintaining our pro-life gains,” she says, adding that the medical emergency exception currently in the law is “adequate.” Asked about doctors scared to counsel their patients about abortion when their patients are faced with complications that are not immediately life-threatening, she responded: “As far as doctors advocating for abortion, our goal is to make abortion not only illegal in our state, but unthinkable.”
Wynia says that strong leadership could cause doctors to follow their medical judgment and cause fewer instances of doctors delaying care to consult legal experts. If we do the right thing, we may end up in court, but we know we’ve got the support of the medical establishment behind us.
There is an abortion ban in Wisconsin, where a mother with two children decided to stop having a third child.
Petranek, 31, and her husband Daniel have two children – a 7-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. She says her pregnancies have been hard on her body because she is diabetes-related. She and her husband wanted three more kids. “I have three brothers and he has one brother – we kind of liked [a number] in the middle of that,” she says.
When abortion was illegal: a pregnant woman with diabetes and her doctors didn’t know when to give her a dilation and curettage
She hoped that the miscarriage would resolve on its own. But a few days after that moment on the couch in May, still running a fever, she worried she could have an infection. She called her doctor and had a D&C.
resting under a heating pad, she saw a leaked Supreme Court opinion which indicated that the court could overturn the law against abortion.
She knew that an old law in Wisconsin could make abortions illegal if it were put back in place. Petranek had no plans to end a pregnancy – she was focused on growing her family. If abortion was illegal, that could affect how the doctors cared for her.
Petranek, a pregnant woman with diabetes, has an increased risk of birth defects. She says that her diabetes is managed well, but that it’s always a risk. It’s more difficult to get healthcare in places that ban abortion if the doctors are worried about being accused of violating the law.
“That was the moment I knew I couldn’t try again,” she says. “It wasn’t even a conscious decision, it was just like – I will not put myself through that again if I don’t have the confidence that I will be able to come out the other side.”
During her first miscarriage years ago, Petranek ended up in the E.R. Doctors gave her a dilation and curettage, or D&C, procedure to stop the bleeding – the same procedure that’s used for many abortions.
If she got pregnant again, she says, and had another miscarriage or any serious pregnancy complication, she thinks there’s a real risk her providers would be afraid to give her a D&C in case they’d be charged with violating the abortion ban.
She says the fact that her pregnancies have been physically and emotionally draining weighs into her calculus as well: “It’s kind of like – I will fall apart.”
What Do We Need to Know About Pregnancies in Wisconsin? And What Should We Do About It? A Theoretical Analysis of the Wisconsin Abortion Law
She claims those fears are due to misinformation that could affect Wisconsin’s law. There are no way to shape or form an abortion when you’re talking about an ectopic pregnancy.
Tony Evers supports the lawsuit against the 1849 ban. But the Republican-controlled legislature has made it clear it wants it to remain in place, and rejected the governor’s call to overturn it in a special session in June. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Leader Chris Kapenga, all Republicans, did not want to speak toNPR about the story.
What’s at stake: Decisions about how many children to have, when to start trying, how close in age children should be spaced – are usually not made by individuals alone, explains Dr. Abigail Cutler, an obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school.
Those decisions are often made with other people, “partners within the context of families, romantic relationships, extended family or chosen family, friends, faith leaders,” she says. Now, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, she says a new element must be added to that calculus: the state laws where people live, and whether they have access to comprehensive care during pregnancy.
How that calculus plays out may come down to personal risk tolerance. One in four women have abortions in their lifetimes and at least one in five pregnant women experience a miscarriage. There are other serious risks in pregnancy too, such as hypertension, ectopic pregnancy, and depression. The U.S. has a maternal mortality rate that is much higher than other industrialized countries.
The researchers compared abortion access policies in the states after the Supreme Court decision in favor of legalized abortion in June with the most recent data available from 2020 and earlier.
Right to Life: A Patient’s Perspective on the Wisconsin Abortion Law Pregnancy Risk Miscarriage and the Status of Their Families
She says that pregnancy intentions are not all black and white. She says it’s hard to capture all of the data because there are differing opinions about whether or not to get pregnant, and most people are somewhere in between.
The legislature is likely to change the law while the case is going through the courts. “Wisconsin Right to Life believes that there is a large majority in both houses of the legislature who support the current law,” says Skogman. “We realize that our law may need to have further discussions on strengthening the medical emergency language so that it’s very clear to women and medical providers that those cases are not in violation of the law.”
Cutler says that the concern Petranek feels about potentially not being able to get timely or appropriate care during a pregnancy complication could be very real.
“It was written only by men at a time when antibiotics were not available, C-sections were not performed with anesthesia, and labor problems were poorly understood, despite the best intentions of the authors.” Women in the 19th century were barely given any rights and were considered second class citizens.
The patient’s perspective is that she and her husband have started taking birth control regularly, but she’s looking into other options such as a vasectomy for her husband or an IUD for herself.
Petranek is sad about the decision but she is also determined to not let what she lost ruin her. If she hadn’t miscarried, she would have had a baby over Thanksgiving this year. “It was good that I had the distraction of the holiday but I kept thinking, ‘I would have been holding a newborn right now,'” she says.
She said she thought about the loss of the baby this spring and the chance to have more children in the future every day. She said they wanted to have a third child.
And she says, she finds herself looking at her 4-year-old daughter in a new way. I have to reconcile with the fact that she will be my youngest child when I eventually want her as a big sister.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/09/1141404068/wisconsin-abortion-law-pregnancy-risk-miscarriage
The impact of abortion restrictions on a woman’s first prenatal appointment in the U.S.: A census of the US and implications for maternal health care in the future
If people who favor abortion restrictions understand how they can affect people like hers, then maybe they will support the restrictions. She explains that she was raised an evangelical Christian – she now goes to a Presbyterian church every Sunday.
The report also says that in 2019, fetal or infant death rates in the first week of life occurred at a 15% higher rate, on average, in states with abortion restrictions than in states with wider abortion access.
“More people in the US die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth than any other developed nation, and most are preventable – and our rates are on the rise,” she said. “So I think that’s just very important as we think of this maternal health crisis and this collision of crises with this impact and this Dobbs decision.”
The analysis also revealed that 39% of counties in states restricting abortion access fit the criteria to be considered “maternity care deserts,” meaning there is limited or no access to maternity health care services, such as an ob/gyn, hospital or birth center with obstetric care or certified midwives. In contrast, 25% of counties can be deemed maternity care deserts.
Maternal death rates have increased in the US but the research found that states that have expanded Medicaid have had less of a increase than other states.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Darney-LandyFellow said that she was not surprised by the findings because the issues around reproductive health care are intricately linked.
When the Joshua’s found out she was pregnant in mid-August, they were excited about having a second child. They have a 4-year-old daughter, and thought that was just the right age to help out with a younger sibling.
At about six weeks pregnant, Joshua, 30, called a physicians’ group in Baton Rouge. She wanted to make her first prenatal appointment there for around the eight-week mark, as she had in her first pregnancy. Joshua says she was told she would have to wait over a month.
“They specifically said, ‘We now no longer see women until they’re at least 12 weeks,'” Joshua recalls. I said, ‘Oh Lord.’ Is it because of what I think? They said yes.
Her husband was at work, so Joshua drove herself to the emergency room at Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge. There were staff at the hospital who took her vitals, drew blood, did a physical exam and gave her an abortion. They told her the ultrasound showed that her fetus had stopped growing, she recalls. It was measuring seven or eight weeks gestation, not 10 or 11 weeks. Her medical records show her pregnancy hormone levels to be abnormally low.
It took weeks, but Joshua was able to pass the pregnancy at home. She would have chosen care that made the experience faster, less painful, less scary and less risky, even if she did not have a choice.
One nurse told her that she could be having one. We don’t want to say that’s what it is. Let’s just continue to watch it. You can continue to come back. Of course, we’re praying for you.'”
She called her mother and husband and told them to meet her at Baton Rouge General because she did not want to return to the first ER. There, a security guard put her in a wheelchair. Her jeans were soaked through with blood. Staff gave her another ultrasound, and the technician told her she’d lost a lot of blood.
The doctor wouldn’t give Joshua discharge papers or refer him somewhere else for treatment of a possible miscarriage because she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
Time-sensitive is what McLemore added about miscarriage treatment. She says that, ideally, a patient like Joshua would have had OB-GYN care even before she got pregnant so that she had more consistent care, which could have helped give her more autonomy over how to treat her miscarriage.
The law of Louisiana does not require a physician to delay care until 12 weeks of pregnancies, according to the communications director for Louisiana Right to Life. And she says the law specifically differentiates miscarriage care from abortion.
Louisiana’s trigger law has a narrow exception for certain pregnancies where the fetus is deemed too sick to survive birth, and one that allows for abortion procedures to treat miscarriages.
To be free of liability for providing an abortion if the fetus has ended or is in an unavoidable and untreatable state, physicians must certify in writing that the fetus has ended or is in an unbearable and untreatable state.
According to the discharge papers and treatment plan provided by Baton Rouge General, if Joshua had a bleeding disorder, they would have told her to follow up with a physician.
In September, at a Louisiana Department of Health meeting, Dr. Joey Biggio, the chair of maternal and fetal medicine with Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest health system, said some OB-GYN doctors were afraid to provide routine care.
The threat to the Attorney General’s office is such that many people are not going to provide appropriate care for patients, regardless of whether or not it’s ectopic pregnancies, abortions, or miscarriages. “We have to find a way to give clear, unequivocal guidance to the providers or we’re going to see some consequences of all of this.”
Miscarriages can be dangerous – they can cause hemorrhaging and infections that lead to sepsis – and it makes sense that patients would seek answers and treatment options from health care providers, says Monica McLemore, a registered nurse and the interim director for the Center for Anti-Racism in Nursing at the University of Washington.
I think we need to apologize for what we’ve done. It’s really sad that the care that she sought for herself was not provided to her,” McLemore says.
Is it really a miscarria to try to get pregnant in Louisiana? The case of Louisiana, where bleeding and inpain is she possible to get two laurices
“They’re trying to interpret specific language and pair it up to specific patients to do some sort of calculation about, you know, have we reached this threshold yet? Or have we not?” she says.
Monica McLemore, the nurse who researches racism and maternal health at the University of Washington, says research shows that Black patients are less likely to be listened to and believed.
That can make people distrust the health system. People who don’t like how they were treated during pregnancy can be less willing to seek care in the future, she added.
“I love my kid. She makes me want another of her. In this time, it’s too dangerous to get pregnant in Louisiana. “I don’t think it’s worth risking your life for a baby right now.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/29/1143823727/bleeding-and-in-pain-she-couldnt-get-2-louisiana-ers-to-answer-is-it-a-miscarria
Defending Freedom in the Arizona Supreme Court: The Case for Abortion as it Will Be Enforcéed by the State of Arizona
WWNO and KHN helped produce this story. It was edited by Carrie Feibel, Jane Greenhalgh, Diane Webber and Carmel Wroth. The art direction and design were handled by the two people. Photographs by Claire Bangser.
The appeals court said that physicians can perform abortions as they please, provided they follow other abortion laws.
The law was asked to be implemented by the Attorney General after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision.
Abortion providers stopped providing the procedure in the state after Roe was struck down, restarted in mid-July after a “personhood” law giving legal rights to unborn children was blocked by a court, and stopped them again when a Tucson judge allowed the 1864 law to be enforced.
Courts in Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming are deciding if the bans can be enforced.
There is no excuse to make that argument because Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the abortion pill challengers, has the right to file a lawsuit if their clients are injured. He pointed to an individual plaintiff in the lawsuit, Dr. Shaun Jester, who practices near Amarillo.
Reproductive rights advocates say that if Kacsmaryk sides with the plaintiffs, “it would eliminate the most commonly used method of abortion care,” according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.
“More generally, if longstanding FDA drug approvals were so easily enjoined, even decades after being issued, pharmaceutical companies would be unable to confidently rely on FDA approval decisions to develop the pharmaceutical-drug infrastructure that Americans depend on to treat a variety of health conditions,” the FDA wrote.
Congress entrusts the FDA with responsibility to ensure safety and efficacy of drugs in a preliminary injunction. FDA applies its technical expertise to make complex scientific determinations about the safety and efficacy of drugs, and these are entitled to substantial deference.
Danco said in a court filing that the lawsuit could hurt the company’s business.
The Texas Case for Reproductive Rights is Bigger than Roe: Drew Tipton, the US District Judge on the Biden-Biden Trial, and the Women’s March
One of the judges presiding over the cases where Texas has funneled its litigation against the Biden administration to Courthouses in remote areas of the state is Drew Tipton, a US District Judge in the Western District of Texas.
In December, Kacsmaryk put on hold the Biden administration’s most recent attempt to end the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program. He has overseen cases involving vaccine mandates, the gender identity guidance issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the use of Covid-19 relief funds for tax cuts.
Before joining the court, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty legal group, where he worked mainly on “religious liberty litigation in federal courts and amicus briefs in the US Supreme Court,” according to his White House biography.
Several interested parties, including Republican and Democratic state attorneys general, are watching the case. Two different multi-state coalitions petitioned the court to act in either direction in the matter.
And a coalition of 22 Republican attorneys general asked the court to issue the preliminary injunction, arguing the FDA exceeded its authority when it approved the medication.
The advocates of abortion rights pointed out that a ruling in favor of the lawsuit would affect every part of the country, since the lawsuit is targeting a federal agency.
And activists are mobilizing in Texas around the issue, with the Women’s March planning to hold a rally at the federal courthouse in Amarillo, Texas, on Saturday.
“We’ve said it before: the fight for reproductive rights now lies in the states, and legal challenges like these are just the latest example of how our fight is bigger than Roe,” said Rachel Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March.
The Case for Free Speech in Texas: Lauren Miller’s OB-GYN and the Danco Response to a Motion by the Attorney General
On Thursday, Kacsmaryk told the plaintiffs that they had until February 24 to respond to a recent filing by the Danco, writing in an order that following the deadline, “briefing will then be closed on the matter, absent any ‘exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.’”
A lot of Texas patients with medically complex pregnancies were turned away, and several faced life-threatening conditions. Miller and a second patient, also named Ashley, were told by doctors that they should end their conjoined twin pregnancies to preserve the life and health of the other twin as well as the pregnant women.
She learned from a genetic counselor that continuing to carry both fetuses could put the healthy one at risk. She was told by the doctor that she couldn’t do anything in Texas and needed to get out of state.
That’s exactly what she did. Miller traveled to Colorado and, at 15-weeks pregnant, she had a “selective reduction” procedure to help ensure her pregnancy with her healthy twin could continue.
She returned to Dallas to continue the care that she had begun, but found that she was not being heard around abortion. She wondered, if the ultrasound technician knew she’d traveled out of state for an abortion, could she get reported? It feels like we’re talking in code because we don’t know where anyone is.
NPR reached out to five Republican Texas lawmakers to ask about Texas’s abortion laws and to get comment on Lauren Miller’s story, but none responded to our request. The Attorney General’s office didn’t reply to NPR’s request to explain what the state plans to do with Texas’s abortion laws.
The first amendment of the constitution protects free speech, explains Elizabeth Sepper, professor of law at University of Texas at Austin. “Physicians have independent speech rights, to speak to their patients openly,” she says. “Physicians should not be scared to say the ‘a-word.'”
“It’s just absolutely crippling,” says Lauren Miller’s OB-GYN, who asked that NPR not use her name because she is not authorized by her employer to speak with the media.
“I have colleagues who say cryptic things like, ‘The weather’s really nice in New Mexico right now. You should go check it out.’ Or, ‘I’ve heard traveling to Colorado is really nice this time of year,’ ” says Miller’s OB-GYN. Patients have to be well-educated enough to pick up on these hints, do their own research, and figure out what to do next. If they want to pursue abortion, they have to have the means to travel or find funding to do so.
Amy O’Donnell of Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion rights group, concurs with Sepper’s interpretation of the law. “Our Texas Alliance for Life attorneys believe there is a constitutional right to interstate travel,” she says. “They believe that Texas will not be able to ban interstate travel for abortion, just as we cannot ban individuals from traveling to another state to participate in casino gambling, which is not legal in Texas.”
Telling a patient to go get care out-of-state: The law is poorly written, and doctors can’t do that in court
The question of whether a doctor can counsel a patient without violating the law isn’t currently being tested in court. “The law is poorly written, likely on purpose, and nobody wants to be number one on this,” says Palmer.
She recalls one Texas patient whose fetus had acrania, where the fetus has no skull. Fetal death is a fatal condition for the fetus. “That was a doctor who didn’t tell her, ‘Go get care out-of-state,'” says Espey. “She was an immigrant. She had to figure out how to travel to New Mexico to have an abortion in six weeks.
There are many genetic testing options for pregnant women in Texas that aren’t available until 10 weeks into the baby’s life, but there isn’t much ability to act on that information.
Palmer, the doctor in Fort Worth, agrees. “We are asking questions that we can only provide limited resources for the answer,” she says. “And it is really frustrating as a physician to not be able to provide full care for patients.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/01/1158364163/3-abortion-bans-in-texas-leave-doctors-talking-in-code-to-pregnant-patients
Why is the DOJ going to court? Steinhauser says it’s not the right time for an abortion ban in the Lone Star State
He sees very little political appetite for bringing abortion up again among Republicans lawmakers in the state, because Texas Republicans did well in the last election even after Roe v. Wade was overturned and the state’s abortion restrictions took effect. He says that Republican legislators realized that they weren’t punished at the ballot box by passing the bills into law. Is there a reason to do anything different?
Steinhauser doesn’t hear much about it in the capital. “I think you’re not going to see a lot of change this year.”
“They would have just been able to give information freely, get it scheduled,” she says. “It wouldn’t become a hassle just to get information and then try to figure out what we need.” Where do we go?”
She’s been processing her experience, in between caring for her 1-year-old and preparing for the arrival of her baby at the end of March. She’s also civically engaged, she says. “I have no qualms, when something’s going on, calling a member of Congress, writing an email, staying informed, [sending] the letter to council.”
The Justice Department is tripling down on its allegations that Texas is “judge-shopping” in the lawsuits the state has brought against the Biden administration.
In order to change it’s approach against the Lone Star State’s pattern of filing cases in a way that allows it to effectively choose the judges that hear them, the department is running into difficulties.
Reuveni, the DOJ attorney, meanwhile, stressed that their motion wasn’t targeted at Tipton, whom the department thought was a fair judge, but rather it was aimed at Texas’ tactics. Reuveni said that had the case been assigned randomly, the department would not have a problem.
The DOJ submitted a brief to the judge saying that Texas is able tocircumvent the random assignment system by never filing in Divisions where they have a chance of not being assigned a judge.
According to the DOJ brief, all of the 28 cases brought against the Biden administration by the Paxton office were filed in just seven divisions where local rules limited the available judges to whom the cases could be assigned. Eighteen of those cases were filed in divisions where a single, pre-determined judge is assigned all lawsuits, the DOJ has said.
Forum shopping is a strategy used by both sides of the aisle. There were cases brought by the progressives against the Trump administration. Legal experts say that when the Trump-era cases were filed, those lawsuits were filed in courthouses where one of several Democratic-appointed judges could be assigned the case.
Tipton, however, seemed largely unconcerned with Texas’ tactics of targeting its cases at his courtroom, as he grilled a DOJ attorney on whether the department was suggesting the judge would be unfair.
The DOJ attorney was told that they should say on the record that the department believes that the judge will give them a fair shake.
That case is now being reviewed by the US Supreme Court, which has kept the Biden policy on pause. Tipton was appointed by former President Donald Trump and is viewed as a very conservative judge, having been confirmed without the support of any Democrats.
The Lubbock division is located in northwest Texas and is close to the state’s biggest cities so it has two-thirds of the civil lawsuits heard by Hendrix. The judge was asked to move the case to DC or Austin by the DOJ. The National Board grant to the non-profit organization in Houston is the sole allegation that relates to Texas, argued the department.
A medical organization called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine filed its paperwork in Amarillo just a few months before they filed the lawsuit. However, the organization’s attorney pushed back on allegations that the filing location was chosen strategically to get the case before Kacsmaryk.
The American public can now file lawsuits against federal agencies where they have been injured and where they live. “And that’s exactly what Dr. Jester did here. He filed this lawsuit with the other plaintiffs in this case because he is based in the Amarillo area, and therefore, we filed this lawsuit where he resides.”
Leif Olson, an attorney in Paxton’s office, told Tipton at last week’s hearing that “I don’t know why our office chooses to file in seven divisions over and over,” referring to the seven divisions DOJ highlighted in its briefs.
The public interest can be served by having the case decided quickly. That is available in the Victoria Division,” Olson said.
If the public hears that the Department of Justice say that, it would go a long way toward addressing their perception concern? the judge said.
AUSTIN: Five Texan Nurses Denied Abtressing Under the Texas Law During a Medical Crisis suing a State Attorney General
AUSTIN — Five women who were denied abortions under Texas law while facing medical crises are suing the state, asking a judge to clarify exceptions to the laws.
The suit names Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a plaintiff. His office responded Tuesday by saying Paxton “will continue to defend and enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature” and by forwarding a “guidance letter” on the state ban triggered by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Zargarian spoke to NPR in fear of repercussions for herself or her doctor but agreed to go public with her full name as part of the lawsuit after they published a story using her first name. Zargarian’s doctors denied her an abortion after her water broke at 19 weeks — too early for the fetus to survive. She flew to Colorado in order to have a termination because of the risk of infection.
Speaking to NPR last year, John Seago of Texas Right to Life — a major force in pushing SB 8 through the state Legislature — said it was “politically advantageous for some of these groups that oppose the bill … to just say this is unreasonable.”
The goal of the new suit is to obligate the state to provide clear guidelines for Texas doctors whose pregnant patients are at risk of having a serious medical problem.
What should a doctor do in Texas? “They had no choice but to seek clarification, they had no choice but to do so.” “They had immense bravery in doing so.”
