When Can Dying Patients Get a Lifesaving Abortion? These Hospital Panels Will Now Decide.

[Nevilledog]

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Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
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In red states, hospital ethics committees now decide when pregnant patients are close enough to death to justify an abortion.

Here's how these panels make life-or-death judgments where abortion is illegal under all but the most dire circumstances. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/abortion-ban-hospital-ethics-committee-mother-life-death.html… @Slate

slate.com
When Can Dying Patients Get a Lifesaving Abortion? These Hospital Panels Will Now Decide.
Abortion bans force ethics committees to determine when a pregnancy is lethal enough to justify termination.
9:08 AM · Jul 29, 2022

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/07/abortion-ban-hospital-ethics-committee-mother-life-death.html

*snip*

After Roe’s fall, ethics committees are taking on a new responsibility: determining whether a pregnant patient suffering a medical emergency may lawfully obtain an abortion. This task is actually a throwback to the 1960s and early 1970s, when states required hospitals to use “abortion committees” that decdied when a pregnancy was dangerous enough to merit termination. The Supreme Court struck down those laws in a companion case to Roe, finding them “unduly restrictive of the patient’s rights and needs.” That decision, of course, has now been overturned. So, in 2022, committees formed for different purposes are suddenly undertaking a job that had been deemed unconstitutional since 1973: giving an up-or-down vote on an emergency abortion.

The fundamental problem facing these committees is that the current crop of abortion bans were written with the most cramped and ambiguous health exceptions imaginable. Many of these laws allow termination only in the case of a genuine medical emergency—a term that is not defined, but suggests the patient’s life must be in imminent peril. GOP lawmakers have consistently rejected a broader exception for the mother’s “health” on the grounds that it creates a loophole allowing “abortion on demand.” The Susan B. Anthony list, a prominent anti-abortion group, has condemned any “health exception” as “a dangerous carveout” that makes “abortion available throughout all of pregnancy without any meaningful restriction.”

Hospitals are thus left to interpret draconian laws that ban abortion except when necessary to “save the life” or “prevent the death” of a pregnant woman. But when is a patient sufficiently close to death to justify termination? When her pregnancy has a 10 percent chance of killing her? 50 percent? 90? That, increasingly, is a question for the hospital ethics committee.

This engineered drama is already playing out on the ground in Missouri, which banned abortion minutes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The ban has no explicit exception for ectopic pregnancies, which are nonviable and deadly if not terminated; Republican Gov. Mike Parsons has declined to call a special session to clarify this ambiguity. Instead, Missouri law permits abortion when there is an “immediate” need to avert death. This language suggests that even if a patient will surely die if her pregnancy is not terminated, she cannot undergo an abortion until the pregnancy is about to kill her.

*snip*

[Deep State Witch]

1. Death Panels

Literally.

[Karma13612]

3. Yup, and it was the Repukes that kept warning

The voters that if the ACA or MCR4All passed, we would have death panels courtesy of Democrats.

These people are VILE.

[DURHAM D]

5. What has Sarah had to say?

This is the first thing she was right about.

[Rebl2]

12. Yep

and they had the gall to say ACA would have death panels!

[Evolve Dammit]

16. Isn't that what they (projected) Dems were doing 8 years ago? Guess they liked the idea and control

[Evolve Dammit]

17. Isn't that what they (projected) Dems were doing 8 years ago? Guess they liked the idea and control

[MyOwnPeace]

2. Aren't those the death panels

That toxic Sarah warned us about?

[Ilsa]

4. Death Panels, courtesy of Republicans, a conservative, twisted,

misogynistic SCOTUS, and voters who don't want to know why abortion is a necessary medical procedure.

[delisen]

6. Republicans embrace the Death Panels they once warned us about

Trying to get us all to participate in their Faux Christian Death Cult.

Is this how Rome fell?

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[marybourg]

8. And guess what group of people

are going to make an organized effort to get themselves and their followers named to hospital ethics panels.

[blm]

9. Republican-made Death Panels

[IcyPeas]

10. reminds me of the saying "a camel is a horse designed by a committee"

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. Roe your vote!

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!

People should not have to have a lawyer to decide health care.

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Gatekeepers of medicine in the courts too

You'll never get past one of these panels

[elias7]

14. Death panel. A non-physician has no role in that decision.

[WinstonSmith4740]

15. This is total bullshit.

And it pisses me off. My question here is, what the hell is wrong with these damn doctors? They all took an oath to "First, do no harm", right? They should be giving the finger to every one of those fascist bastards. Doctors can stop this. Nobody's coming into emergency rooms and telling them they can't treat that gunshot victim, or that suicide attempt, or that assault victim because they're not close enough to death. They need to step up, especially in cases like these, and tell those idiots to get the hell out of the operating room, because nothing going on there is any of THEIR DAMN BUSINESS.

[roamer65]

18. Repuke death panels.