Access to Reproductive Healthcare Under Siege

Earlier this week, ProPublica reported in a piece titled “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.” Amber Nicole Thurman was a 28-year- old single mother with a 6-year- old child. At six weeks into her pregnancy, she discovered she was carrying twins and made the difficult decision to have an abortion. Thurman had to go to North Carolina, where a woman can get an abortion up to 20 weeks, because Georgia had already passed the abortion ban. In the North Carolina clinic, she was first given two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, which ended the pregnancy medically. Once Thurman arrived back in Georgia after the treatment, she unfortunately developed a rare and severe sepsis complication from the drugs, but one which could be easily treated with a dilation and curettage, or D&C procedure, to remove the dead tissue and prevent further infection.

Georgia’s new abortion laws precluded such a solution. The D&C procedure, to help resolve the sepsis, was meant to remove the now-infected fetal tissue from Thurman. Given Georgia’s six-week ban on abortion, however, doctors were slow about proceeding with her treatment out of fear of prosecution. Abortion, which the D&C procedure falls under, in Georgia is legal after six weeks if it is required to save the life of the mother, but it is unclear at what point doctors can intervene. This inactivity is further complicated by the fact that D&Cs, while necessary for medical emergencies like miscarriages, are often delayed as physicians navigate the restrictions imposed by the ban. Physicians, feeling constrained by ambiguous bans, also do not want to risk prosecution. Amber Nicole Thurman from Georgia died in 2022 from an infection, which a state committee tasked with “reviewing pregnancy-related deaths” deemed completely preventable. Reproductive justice advocates had warned that the end of Roe V. Wade would lead to a rise in maternal mortality rates, especially in black women like Thurman. These advocates argue that Thurman’s death is the first death caused by the end of Roe v. Wade. Thurman is not the only woman so far to die due to bans on abortion, but hers is the first officially confirmed. The committee that investigated Thurman’s death, and other committees across the country, usually operate with a two-year delay, meaning that we will probably get more insight into the consequences of state-level abortion bans in the near future.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill called the Right to IVF Act. This bill would create a national entitlement to access fertility treatment from healthcare providers, aligning with established and evidence-based medical standards. Additional measures are designed to enhance the affordability of these treatments and mandate that insurance companies provide coverage for fertility care. The bill received a vote of 51-44, with two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine (a SLU alum) and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting with Democrats. The bill failed to reach the required 60 votes to pass. Access to reproductive health, i.e. abortion, contraception, birth control and IVF, are very popular in America. Despite this, there are no federal protections for reproductive healthcare. The overturning of Roe, the death of Thurman, and the Senate blocking IVF for the second time means one thing for Americans: it does not matter how many lives it will save or families it will produce or even how popular it is; access to reproductive healthcare remains under constant threat. This stark reality highlights a troubling hypocrisy among many Republicans who claim to be “pro-life.” Their actions suggest a prioritization of ideology over the well-being of their constituents. If they truly valued life, they would support comprehensive reproductive healthcare, recognizing it as essential for the health and stability of families. Instead, their policies often disregard the very lives they profess to protect, revealing a profound disconnect between their rhetoric and the needs of the people they serve.

According to Pew Research Center, 62 percent of all Americans across both parties’ support abortion access, and 79 percent of voters support access to birth control, condoms, and other forms of contraception and think it should be widely available. Even former President Trump, Republican politicians and voters alike support access to IVF. IVF was not an issue many people thought of, even after the end of Roe, until earlier this year when an Alabama court declared that embryos are children, causing providers to temporarily stop fertility treatments. So why is it, then, that a party that has transformed itself into a party that adheres itself almost entirely to Trump’s word, gone against something he supposedly supports? They argue that the bill that has failed in the Senate twice this year is too broad, but I really don’t understand what else is stopping them from supporting this bill. As we’ve seen, the Republican Party very much touts itself as a party that supports reproduction to raise birth rates and disseminate future workers, so why are they so against IVF? If anything, they should be the party propagating it. It helps women with fertility issues to have children and allows families to grow. I can’t seem to give you an answer as to why they are so adamantly against it.

The Republicans aren’t the only ones to blame. Democrats have consistently refused to pass access to reproductive health care. Even with a supermajority in 2009, Barack Obama did not prioritize reproductive health care, despite making it a campaign promise. In his last three and a half years of being President, Biden has done nothing but make promises to protect reproductive health care, with no action to follow. Even in the wake of Roe being overturned, all he has done is use words to placate voters with no follow-through. States across the country have introduced referendums wherein voters can decide whether or not they want their states to have access to abortion and to what degree. Many states that have had these referendums have seen overwhelming support in favor of more access to abortion, even states considered to be “red.” On the ballot for 2024, ten states include amendments which would protect abortion access. But abortion at the state level is not enough to protect women in hostile states. Why should a woman from Texas have to “flee” to get a life-saving procedure? How can one even justify something like what happened to Amber Thurman or Kate Cox? State protection is not enough. Roe had its own shortcomings and should have served as a starting block for expanding access to reproductive health rather than being the sole foundation. We should have built on Roe to the point where it became unnecessary. Instead, we relied on it solely for 50 years and we are now starting to see the effects of its overturning. Access to healthcare is not a nail you can hit halfway in, then stop. If more politicians put their words into action and reality over their ideology, Amber Thurman would still be alive, and her child would still have a mother.