I remember back in the 1980s when pro-choice advocates would talk about what would happen if Roe was ever overturned. One of the dominant images was that of the coathanger alongside the specter of the “back alley abortion.” I will confess that at the time it seemed perhaps a bit over the top. I know that it was certainly portrayed in right-wing media and from the pulpit as just a bunch of hyperbole.
Reality, it turns out, is far worse than the alleged hyperbole.
The AP reports: Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom.
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.
These are all heart-breakingly awful stories that should be unacceptable, regardless of one’s position on abortion. The notion that the legal regimes in these states have become so draconian that healthcare professionals are unable/unwilling to render proper aid is inhumane.
Pregnant patients have “become radioactive to emergency departments” in states with extreme abortion restrictions, said Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University health law and policy professor.
“They are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone,” Rosenbaum said.
This is not “protecting babies” nor is it “respecting the sanctity of life.” It isn’t incentivizing people to abstain from sexual activity that certain moral codes might object to. This is cruelty, plain and simple, and it is impossible to conceive that this is a just outcome of judicial and legislative processes.
The point of the rhetoric from the past was to underscore the potential horrors that American women would endure if abortion were made illegal. I would not at all downplay the risks that people might undertake to get an abortion if they were sufficiently desperate, which is the essence of the back alley abortion rhetoric. But I think it is worth plainly underscoring: we are repeatedly seeing women who need critical healthcare denied access because of these laws which is not the result of trying to transgress the law, but rather are the result of them seeking needed healthcare.
To be clear, I am not discounting the real harm that forcing desperate women into homemade or clandestine abortions could cause. I am just illustrating the real consequences of these laws that are manifesting in a particularly horrible and public way.
I would further note that these types of outcomes are why simplistic assertions that this situation can be solved by appealing to “state’s rights” are incorrect.
It also seems worth noting that Dobbs has not led to fewer abortions, but instead the opposite: Despite Bans, Number of Abortions in the United States Increased in 2023.
