Anti-abortion legislation can have unintended medical consequences that extend beyond women seeking to terminate a pregnancy — particularly in the management of a miscarriage, experts say.
On Monday, a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion published by Politico revealed that the high court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guarantees abortion access.
Up to one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to some estimates, a loss that can be traumatic and dangerous for women. The risk is even higher after age 40. But the medical care a woman needs when she’s had a miscarriage can mirror how an abortion is performed, experts say.
“Medically, miscarriage and abortions are treated in very similar way,” said Dr. Stephanie Mischell, a family medicine physician in Texas and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
That means that laws that restrict abortion or that outlaw certain medications or procedures used in abortion, also have the potential to limit treatment for miscarriage.
“There is this false assumption that abortions can be regulated and restricted and criminalized without impacting women’s health care more broadly,” said Yvonne Lindgren, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who specializes in reproductive rights.
Inga, 62, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, still feels the trauma of her miscarriage from nearly 30 years ago. (She requested her last name not be used due to the stigma around miscarriage.)
She was 13 weeks pregnant with her third child.
Extremely heavy bleeding led to a drop in her blood pressure, and her husband rushed her to the emergency room of a Catholic hospital in the state.
“I was crashing,” Inga said. “I thought, ‘This could kill me.’”
At the hospital, doctors confirmed she was having a miscarriage. After staunching the bleeding, an obstetrician wanted to perform a procedure called a dilation and curettage — commonly referred to as a D&C — to…
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