Thread by @KateLouiseWells

In Texas, Whole Women’s Health advocacy director Courtney Chambers is telling #hj22 about the local impacts of abortion bill. Women driving all the way to Minnesota, where they’ve opened a clinic by the airport, to seek care.

Some of these women have never flown on a plane before, she says. Says staff are repeatedly having to tell women who come in: “I’m sorry, we can’t help you.” Chambers gets emotional, pauses.

Dr. Lisa Harris of @UMich says in michigan, Roe is the only thing standing between residents and abortion ban. Says michigan would see an almost 10% increase in annual births, from those who weren’t able to get abortion when they wanted one.

Maternal mortality will rise too, she says. For black women, the chance of dying in childbirth is 2 to 3 times higher than white women. So Black women will bear the brunt of higher deaths.

Dr. Miller says rise of “self abortions” can be done safety when medically supervised. Hopefully we won’t have a pre-Roe horror story of back alley abortions, Miller says, b/c people may be able to manage their own abortions. That’s a good thing, she says.

But that’s a best case scenario. In worst case, ERs will need to be prepared to respond with critical lifesaving care for women who try to end pregnancy through unsafe means: inserting objects, trauma, throwing themselves downstairs.

Correction: Dr. Lisa Harris is who I’m quoting. She’s professor of reproductive health and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at @UMich

If abortion becomes illegal in michigan, state does have a clause to allow abortion to protect life of the mother, Harris says. Sometimes that’s obvious, but often it’s murkier: how much risk does someone with say, cardiac disease, need for it to count as lifesaving?

Would that mean doctors would have to allow a high-risk pregnancy to continue to say, 6 months, in order for risk of death level to reach 50%? Harris says this keeps her up at night.

Michigan doctors are seeing abortion patients from Texas, Harris says. And for selective reduction procedures, when one fetus threatens the survival of the others, is another unknown. Patients who get fertility treatment could find themselves suddenly having much higher risks.

Harris says patients and doctors get really good at holding “the tension, the bothness”’of abortion. Patients know a baby won’t be born because they’re ending this pregnancy, AND they know they are exercising control over the course of their own lives.

But outside of the medical community, we’re not good at holding that “bothness” and comfort with the hard parts of this, Harris says. But for doctors, “it just feels like care.”

Dr. Crystal Berry-Roberts, an OB with DocWhoListens, descricss 27 yr old patient with IUD. It fell out, she had a heavy period, conceived, she was in nursing school. 40 yr old patient, whose first pregnancy had genetic abnormality, and they carried to term knowing baby would die.

That 40 yr old woman then had a 2nd pregnancy, with same genetic abnormality, had to make choice again: carry baby to term that will die again? Or seek abortion out of state? Last week, she had a patient who traveled out of state for abortion, started bleeding heavily at home…

That woman presented to the ER and lied, said she had miscarried. She was worried she could be arrested and had 2 kids at home already. So she didn’t disclose to ER doctors.