"A pregnancy turns deadly in an anti-abortion state. What happens next?
Why medical emergency exceptions for abortions aren’t enough."

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/23191865/abortion-ban-medical-emergency-ectopic-pregnancy

By Neel Dhanesha.

"Fear of prosecution could alter medical decision-making"

"Do doctors get to make the call, or do lawyers?"

"Where will abortions even occur?"

Last paragraphs:

....Abortion pills can cause complications in rare circumstances, and King worries patients may choose to delay care or be afraid to tell their doctors about what medicines they took. That’s going to disproportionately affect people of color, who already face medical bias. “My biggest fear is that somebody’s going to take those meds at home because they don’t have any other choice and then have a hemorrhage and be too scared to come in,” said King.

It’s likely many of these questions will only be answered once they make their way back to the Supreme Court, which Shachar says is an inevitability. But that will take months, if not years.

It’s hard to predict what kind of damage will be done in the meantime. “It’s hard to imagine Americans will tolerate women dying,” said Freedman. “I feel like doctors will get loud if it’s truly causing deaths. But there’s so much we don’t know. We never thought we would see this day.”

(end)

And in the NY Times, July 3, there was an op-ed about how the overturning of RvW is going to affect even rich people. Far more than they think.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/opinion/abortion-rights-wealthy.html

By Elizabeth Spiers.

Excerpts:

....Attenuating the rights of half of the population will have systemic effects akin to climate change. Just as no amount of investment in Mars-bound space colonization, air-conditioned bunkers and private firefighting services will save the rich from terrible outcomes if the planet becomes uninhabitable, the rich cannot avoid the effects of the overturning of Roe. Residents of blue states won’t be exempt. And men who think the ban won’t affect them are mistaken; it will affect women they know and love, and it will change the political economy in which they live and operate.

The persistent myth that the wealthy will be unaffected is predicated on the vague notion that they’ll be able to find and purchase abortion pills by mail, travel to places where abortion is legal or get abortions from local providers willing to break the law.

....But the wealthiest are in for some unpleasant surprises when it comes to abortion. The scenarios in which a woman needs an abortion include medical emergencies in which any delay in treatment can have severe, even fatal, consequences — and in those circumstances abortion pills obtained by mail won’t help.

One in 50 pregnancies in the United States is ectopic, for example, in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. The embryo must be removed, and delaying that treatment can result in sepsis, internal bleeding and death. Placental abruptions must be addressed immediately to avoid extensive bleeding, renal failure and even, in some instances, death.

Any woman who finds herself in either of these scenarios is not going to be able to pack her bags and go for a long drive. Even for someone with the means, an airlift to a medical facility in another state may not be quick enough to save her. She will need to be treated locally and immediately. Some of the bans going into effect around the country include medical exceptions for these situations, but if there’s any ambiguity about what the law allows, the time it takes a medical professional to consult a lawyer may be the difference between life and death.

Some states are expected to try to ban interstate travel for abortions. Bans in Texas and Oklahoma leave room for that possibility. Planned Parenthood’s Montana branch has reportedly decided that it will no longer provide medication abortions for patients from certain states where bans are in effect or in the works, citing the “rapidly changing” legal landscape. It’s also clear that many Republicans view the Roe reversal as an inroad to a total federal ban. If they gain electoral victories in 2024, this is a very likely outcome, and in that case there will be no blue state abortion clinics to travel to. Even now, the lines and waiting times at abortion clinics in safe haven states are likely to get very long.

Many people also assume the wealthy can always find a local doctor willing to perform an abortion, even in a state where it has become illegal. This seems unlikely. While some providers did flout the law and provide women with abortions before Roe in 1973, the ubiquity of digital surveillance and other mechanisms for violating the privacy of women seeking abortions have made it far more difficult for them to do so privately and safely. Trigger laws are already forcing medical professionals to consult lawyers before they provide care, and laws that criminalize abortion leave health care workers with little incentive to violate them. When faced with the prospect of prosecution or losing a medical license, how many doctors will take this risk, even when money is offered? Meanwhile, anti-choice conservatives are already working to make it harder to obtain abortion pills.

....The reality is that women from every demographic need abortions. Well-off conservative women are not immune to contraception failures, gynecological emergencies, miscarriages, incest or rape. Many women find that despite their beliefs, carrying a pregnancy to term is just not something they can go through with, for a range of reasons. Pregnancy itself can be life-threatening for women with certain existing medical conditions, and even for women who don’t have those risks, it is life-altering. The kind of person who might need or want an abortion is, put simply, any person capable of getting pregnant.

Women will die because of this — disproportionately poor and middle-class women but not just poor and middle-class women. Rich women could just as easily suffer and die, too, even those who think that they would never need an abortion or that they would never be denied essential medical care in the United States of America in 2022.

There will be other effects: Roe is a privacy law, and there are implications for the ruling outside of the issue of abortion. Forced birth will take women out of the work force in an already tight labor market. Women could be treated like criminals for having miscarriages, which are incredibly common. And women who are pregnant when their partners don’t want them to be will be more at risk for domestic violence and homicide. Individual wealth won’t prevent these outcomes, either.

It is, of course, true that the wealthy are the least vulnerable in the new post-Roe world, and this is not a requiem for them on a tiny violin. But it is important for all parties to understand that all people are going to participate in this nightmare, whether they realize it now or not. The wealthy unfortunately have an outsize influence on politics, so how much the bans harm them, inconvenience them or enrage them will most likely affect the will of politicians to vote for and maintain abortion bans.

The overturning of Roe will affect all of us. And if you are lucky enough to be wealthy, your money probably won’t shield you.

(end)

And, yesterday, there was this. (It took up the whole PAGE! For good reason.)

"Can You Answer These Sex Ed Questions? A Post-Roe Quiz."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/07/opinion/sex-education-quiz.html

There were 14 questions - it's a multiple-choice test.

I aced it - though question 6 puzzled me briefly. (And #12 has one bizarre "choice.")

There are nearly 1,000 comments.

Of course, what are the chances that most anti-abortion states are going to have comprehensive sex ed in schools?

It reminds me of a man in his 60s, online, who's otherwise very smart - but who thinks that having sex ed in school is as ridiculous and wrong-headed as, say, having schools teach housecleaning or personal hygiene. As in: "why should TEACHERS have that responsibility? What excuse do you have not to do your OWN research if your parents can't answer your questions?"

I pointed out to him that one could argue that teachers shouldn't have to spend their precious time teaching home economics either - but that used to be a pretty common course in schools; it included classes in cooking, and one could argue that learning proper nutrition is essential to the future of the nation's health. Obviously, unwanted children (not to mention STDs and the health hazards of pregnancy) are very hard on couples' relationships, bank accounts - and on the welfare of the entire nation as well.