Valuing a woman's life

We’re approaching Mother’s Day, when moms are honored with flowers, cards, gifts, breakfast in bed, meals at a nice restaurant…

It’s a good time to be mindful that sometimes women die from complications of pregnancy. Modern medical care can deal with some things that can kill mothers and babies in more primitive birth situations. 

Unfortunately, pregnant women now are threatened with death if something goes wrong in GOP-controlled “right to life” states where abortions are banned or with supposed exceptions to save the life of the mother.

The sticky question is, how close to death must a woman be before a doctor will dare provide treatment, such as to remove dead fetal tissue if it doesn’t come out on its own? Does she have to be out of body and floating up that tunnel toward the glowing white light before the situation qualifies as life-threatening?

National Public Radio has reported on some of these situations.

In Ohio last year, a 10-year-old girl, pregnant through rape, had to go to Indiana to end the pregnancy. Indiana is no longer an option. Who thinks a 10-year-old could go through pregnancy and delivery without serious damage to her own health?

Then there was the woman in Ohio who had a miscarriage and went through days of very heavy bleeding after the tissue was not expelled. At what point does blood loss become life threatening? I think she went to Pennsylvania to get treatment, which is the same as a medicinal or surgical abortion.

The drug mifepristone, which the GOP wants to ban nationally, is used to remove dead or hopelessly damaged fetal tissue, not just to end unwanted pregnancies. 

The North Dakota governor, a man, recently signed a law that any pregnancy emergency can only be treated within six weeks of the start of pregnancy. Apparently after that, let the woman die, unless she can get to a state where abortions are still legal.  

In Texas, a woman was advised around halfway into the 40-week gestation, that the fetus was missing a brain and part of the skull. But she had to carry the doomed pregnancy to term. The baby died four hours after birth.

In Oklahoma, a woman with a “molar” pregnancy, where the fetus is not viable and in this case also was cancerous, could not get treatment in that state, despite risk of fatal bleeding. She was able to get treatment in Kansas. Remember that last year, Kansas voters rejected an effort to remove a right to abortion from the state constitution.

Thanks to the GOP and so-called right-to-lifers, non-viable fetuses count more than female bodies carrying them.

– Carole McWilliams, Bayfield