One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide.

“It is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking,” said Amelia Huntsberger, an OB/GYN in Oregon. “It is appalling that someone would show up to an emergency room and not receive care – this is inconceivable.”

It’s happened despite federal mandates that the women be treated.

  • JasonDJ
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    8 months ago

    Are you implying the doctors are pacifists here?

    Pacifism: a person who believes that war and violence are unjustifiable.

    I suppose that implies, then, that the pro-lifers are the pacifists here, though they only really consider violence against the fetus, and not the violence of oppressing the mothers (through use of force when they dare use their bodily autonomy or trust doctors to use gasp science and medicine instead of select excerpts from an old anthology of fables).

    The doctors here are really in a bind. They cannot practice medicine without fear of legal repercussions. They are put into trolley problems where flicking the switch has a significant chance of also teleporting them onto the other track, multiple times a day. The only way they can guarantee their own safety (and license, and livelyhood, and that of their family) is through inaction, not pacifism.