A Tennessee Woman Had to Take a 6-Hour Ambulance Ride to Get an Abortion

[Nevilledog]

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The Tennessee Holler
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AGAIN: “A pregnant Tennessee woman with high and rising blood pressure had to take a roughly six-hour ambulance ride to get an abortion in North Carolina…”

@GovBillLee y’all did this.

jezebel.com
A Tennessee Woman Had to Take a 6-Hour Ambulance Ride to Get an Abortion
Exceptions to abortion bans for the life of the pregnant person are often meaningless in practice.
7:08 PM · Oct 17, 2022

https://jezebel.com/a-tennessee-woman-had-to-take-a-6-hour-ambulance-ride-t-1849668907

A pregnant Tennessee woman with high and rising blood pressure had to take a roughly six-hour ambulance ride to get an abortion in North Carolina, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. When she got to the second hospital several hundred miles away, her blood pressure was dangerously high and she was showing signs of kidney failure.

The woman’s doctor in Tennessee, Leilah Zahedi-Spung, is a high-risk obstetrician who spoke to the WSJ for a story about how abortion bans impact medical emergencies. Zahedi-Spung said the patient was in her second trimester when her blood pressure began rising; the fetus had been diagnosed with genetic abnormalities and wasn’t expected to survive. Zahedi-Spung worried the woman could develop life-threatening preeclampsia and thought she needed an abortion, but the procedure has been banned in Tennessee since late August. Eight states border Tennessee and abortion is banned in all but two of them.

“She kept asking if she was going to die,” Zahedi-Spung told the WSJ. “I kept saying, ‘I’m trying, I’m trying, we’re going to make it happen. We just need to get you to the right place where you can be taken care of.’” She said she was relieved to see the patient alive a few weeks later.

The Tennessee law, which makes providing abortions a felony, doesn’t contain explicit exceptions for abortions “necessary to prevent death or serious and permanent bodily injury”—instead, doctors have to prove the procedure was necessary via what’s known as an “affirmative defense.” The Associated Press described affirmative defense this way: “Instead of the state having to prove that the procedure was not medically necessary, the law shifts the burden to the doctor to convince a court that it was.” (Bans in North Dakota and Idaho—both of which are currently blocked—also use affirmative defense language.)

*snip*

[Maraya1969]

1. I wonder if she'll have to pay for it.

[Nevilledog]

2. Of course she will. It's America.

[viva la]

3. I wonder if many OB/GYNs are going to leave these states--

where they know they will not be allowed to take good care of their patients.

[Volaris]

5. Hopefully, their patients will follow.

Hard to run a brood-mare business, without any mares. Will be interesting to hear their arguments for why their economies are collapsing in 20 years...

[viva la]

6. Maybe they'll even figure out that grownup immigrants are more productive workers

than unwanted babies, and start welcoming them.

[Volaris]

7. I wasn't gonna extend them THAT much credit (not without a deposit, anyway)...

[KentuckyWoman]

9. I know a high risk OB who is going to tough it out.

Her job is to keep women alive when things go wrong. She'll keep doing it, even if it means she has to get a patient on a life flight to Canada.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. Battle cry of this election: Roe your vote, up and down the ballot!

Women are not government-owned incubators. The radicalized Republican party, aka U.S. Taliban, won't stop with health care rights of women and girls.

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

THESE are the races that will determine control of the House of Representatives:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217206774

Got post-its?
Stick 'em up for a blue wave: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217078977

[ecstatic]

8. It's open season on women,

especially black women. How many women will die because of these laws? This makes me so mad and sad.

[Bayard]

10. This is just obscene

There is no equivalent to this in men's healthcare. Remember the old saying--if men had to give birth, there would be no more babies? If rethuglican men had to go through what they are putting women through with abortion, the situation would change dramatically.

[ShazzieB]

12. There's also a famous quote about this.

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

That quote has been attributed to both Gloria Steinem and Florynce Kennedy. I don't know which is correct.

[OMGWTF]

11. So. Much. Fking. Misogyny.

I am really starting to hate it here.