An influential group in Louisiana that has long opposed abortion access is calling out medical providers and their legal advisers who have cited the state’s ban on most abortions to deny treatments that remain legal.
It comes after hospitals in Baton Rouge refused to provide treatments for a woman who had a near-deadly miscarriage.
Healthcare providers are afraid of liability. The procedure that the woman needed was similar to abortion. But doctors fear prosecution.
Doctors are citing purported ambiguities in the ban on terminating most pregnancies which took effect in Louisiana after the Supreme Court last year overturned the nationwide abortion rights granted by Roe v Wade.
Louisiana has some of the tightest restrictions against abortion in the U.S.
But the woman has actually legally entitled to the care she sought under an exception to the ban which involves miscarriages, Sarah Zagorski of the anti-abortion group Louisiana Right for Life said.
The organization has been involved in anti-abortion legislation since 1970. It said that under Louisiana’s abortion ban, it is legal to provide and receive miscarriage treatments, even if they closely resemble some abortions.
Louisiana has the highest maternal mortality rate in the U.S.
Abortion access advocates have also rallied around the case. Abortion access advocates are fighting for Louisiana and other similarly situated states to do away with their bans altogether.
But the legislatures of Louisiana and those other states are controlled by conservatives who oppose abortion.
Louisiana’s state health department issued an emergency rule late last month that allows women to terminate pregnancies if their unborn child suffers from one or more of 25 listed medical conditions, including acrania.
On June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined the right to abortion care. Abortion bans are now in place in a dozen states across the US, including Louisiana and every state bordering it.
Abortion is illegal in Louisiana, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
All abortion clinics in the state have closed.
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