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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29201 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Another abortion case (edit: this article is is based off of and links to a lengthy ProPublica article on the case) finds its way to the front page of reddit. To its credit, it's not the ragebait that the "mother-fails-to-go-to-hospital-after-days-of-heavy-bleeding-caused-by-abortion-pills" seen recently.

The expectant mom had woken up on the day of her baby shower with nausea and vomiting, which turned out to be a deadly infection.

But she had to plead for medical assistance, with doctors waiting to perform two ultrasounds to confirm her fetus had no heartbeat before they would intervene.

Wait, what? Two ultrasounds? One ultrasound confirming no heartbeat wasn't enough? The article heavily winks that it was all due to that crummy heartbeat law:

Experts told the publication that there was ‘no medical reason’ to make Crain wait for two ultrasounds before taking action to save her.

But wait a minute, what does the law itself say? Per Wikipedia:

Section 3 of the Act requires a physician to test for a "fetal heartbeat" (or "cardiac activity") before performing an abortion and prohibits abortion if a "fetal heartbeat" is detected. The only exception is for when "a physician believes a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance." The term "medical emergency" is not defined in the statute.

Okay, sure, it's a little vague on what emergencies are. But I think you could pretty easily argue that a deadly infection is a medical emergency. Especially after you already have one ultrasound confirming no heartbeat.

As the article says, this is one of two cases where someone died upon waiting for two ultrasounds. At what point is this medical malpractice that has little to do with abortion laws? I have to wonder if the doctor is an activist doctor that is morally opposed to the heartbeat bill and is willing to let people die to further the cause. If someone's on the brink of death, you should treat them, legality should be an afterthought. But to wait for two ultrasounds, it seems like saving people was the afterthought here.

Edit: They also turned her away for sepsis without treating her, as The_Nybbler points out. Hmm, seems like abortion laws aren't entirely the reason for her death. You kind of have to treat people for that instead of just shrugging that you can't kill her fetus and then send her home. In fact, maybe the sepsis caused the fetus to die? But they missed that it was sepsis.

Well, the relevant question to ask is what algorithm the doctors were following and if there would have been one that they should have been following instead. Have there been cases, or plausible threats, of doctors getting into trouble for not performing a second test? I could imagine anti-abortion activists subscribing to a narrative along the lines of "liberal doctors have no intention of complying with the spirit of the law, so they will try to get around it by performing a single test with a high false negative rate to murder more babies", and going to look for cases that fit the pattern and demanding that compliant attorney generals prosecute.

Have there been cases, or plausible threats, of doctors getting into trouble for not performing a second test?

Have any doctors gotten into trouble at all since Dobbs? I can only imagine those cases would have been shouted about even louder.

I can understand the entire Sword of Damocles argument, but I've been surprised that none felt passionately about it enough to pull a Kevorkian and openly violate the rules: it feels to me that people are far more passionate about abortion rights compared to euthanasia.

Someone tried, but the suit was thrown out. Judicial activism? Sloppy law? Who can say?

Obviously the parents are less likely to sue their provider, so if the public enforcement is thrown out, civil suits are going to be hard to come by.

Was this a suit under the pre-dobbs ban? There were actually several suits under it, all by complete lunatics with no connection to the abortion issue, and all of which were thrown out, while the pro-life organizations that had been gearing up to act as private prosecutors were legally enjoined from suing under it.

No, it was SB8.

That was the pre-Dobbs ban, which was enforced exclusively through private suits and has(if I'm reading the law correctly) been automatically voided due to a clause preventing its use after the overturn of Roe v Wade. The current Texas abortion ban is a trigger law which had been on the books long before that was passed.

Ah, my mistake, then.

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