What is abortion?

Up until the term was politicized, the word abortion was simply a medical term for the stopping of a pregnancy, with the word “abort” meaning to stop. A spontaneous abortion, for example, is the medical terminology for a miscarriage. A missed or incomplete abortion is the medical term for a pregnancy that simply stops growing for an unknown reason. A D&C is a medical procedure used to remove the pregnancy either in the case of a missed or incomplete abortion, an elective abortion, or to remove a retained placenta.

When Texas’ “trigger law” went into effect on August 25, 2022, following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, healthcare providers were prohibited from providing elective abortions.

Texas’ “trigger law” was a law that passed in 2021 – the year prior – that would outlaw elective abortion in Texas only once a certain event happened, like the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Dobbs decision. On May 2, 2022, a draft majority opinion of the Dobbs decision was leaked, and the final opinion was issued June 24, 2022.

Although healthcare organizations and hospitals in Texas had more than a year to prepare for the impending restrictions surrounding abortion care, our research has shown that few chose to provide guidance and protection to their physicians to allow them to provide healthcare allowed under the law.
Although no physicians have been prosecuted under the abortion restrictions, many chose to simply stop providing the healthcare they were permitted to provide. In large part, this has been because the hospital systems in which they work failed to provide the physicians working in their emergency departments and labor and delivery wards with appropriate policies and guidance and support for determining whether patients required an abortion as a result of life-threatening physical conditions caused by and arising from pregnancy that placed them at risk of death – established exceptions to the abortion restrictions.

At the time of its implementation, Texas’ abortion law was well-known, and hospital systems had plenty of time to put policies and guidance into place and establish committees to protect patients and to assist physicians in making these determinations at their facilities. Hospital systems profit enormously through the provision of healthcare to patients. Healthcare is a trillion-dollar business. Hospitals can afford to protect patients, and the protection of these patients must be paramount. Although patients face extreme risks to their health and life from infection, rupture, and complications of pregnancy, physicians appear to err on the side of protecting themselves – and not the patients.

When this happens, Michelle sues the hospital systems to help the patients or – in the cases where women have died – their families. But in each case, she also requires and fights for internal policy changes to keep this from happening to other women, to other families.