Surprise! New abortion laws mean fewer OB-Gyns. (Oh well...NMP)

When legislators play doctor...

Another warning, obvious to anyone involved in women’s healthcare: news flash…providers don’t want to practice where they’re threatened with lawsuits and prison, and no one will explain why or how.

Unfortunately, our national mottos of “not my problem” and “worry about that later” are in full display right now on this one. An academic issue, of course, if you’re not of childbearing age, planning a pregnancy…but all too real to those who might. Say, in a state where the average age is 37 but the average age of lawmakers is 55, and only 27% of legislators are women.

Of course, those childbearing age women would be the same ones we’re encouraging to have children to deal with our lowest-ever US fertility and birth rates. You know—tomorrow’s employees and military recruits? We’re already missing an estimate 10.8 million births from the start of the 2008 recession through 2024: 11 million kids who would have started turning 16 this year, the first year employers and the military really saw a stark future. (In case you wondered about the real reason behind the sudden media interest in tradwives, natalism [and its very odd bedfellows], and warm feature stories on the joys of large families and happy ballerina farm life clearly within reach for all. /S)

I’m personally going to be very happy when we mature out of this phase, as the country always eventually seems to do when things tilt too far in one direction. As Churchill is said to have noted a century ago, we Americans do seem to do the right thing after we try everything else.

But we’re still very much on the uphill part of that climb. There’s a vast geography between “none” and “all,” and between honoring the religious beliefs of others and how you personally feel when you or a loved one is bleeding out on an ER stretcher while your professionally and personally risk-minded physician and hospital are waiting to see if death is 100% for absolutely sure inevitable. There’s another abstract concept: how near-death is “inevitable?” How close can you get while a lawyer or judge overrules a physician’s knowledge and experience? Guess what…too close does not end up happy. There is absolutely a point of still-alive-but-no-return. The odds at that point are very, very low of a happy result from attempting then to find a hospital lawyer or judge to approve intervention. Brain damage or death are seconds away.

Unfortunately, as is already happening, we’re going to keep seeing more preventable maternal deaths in a country that already ranks 55th in the world on maternal death, the worst of any developed country. On top of what should already be a massively embarrassing world ranking, the stunning 56% post-abortion law increase in Texas should be even more horrifying to anyone with a moral compass. We’ll continue to see more appalling stories like this recent case—and fewer docs practicing in these states—than the already existing OB-Gyn shortage. Docs can make a lot more money with far less angst in specialties other than OB-Gyn. For hospitals, physicians and other providers, the overriding threat of legal action due to purposefully murky laws is a terrific reason to not practice in a state committed to outlawing perceived threats to human life, particularly when that same state remains committed hiding data on that particular threat to human life.

But the cost won’t be evident for too long for too many women: the long medical education training pipeline won’t show rerouting to other specialties for years, and it takes time and money to relocate a practice. And until you’re in that emergency room, it’s all abstract anyway; you know…worry about that later. But…would you set up your business, or stay in a state, that threatens to sue you or send you to prison over laws that same state actively refuses to clarify? I’ve been in women’s health my whole life, and I sure wouldn’t. I worry that’s the point.

Click here for the KFF abortion law dashboard to see if it could actually be your problem—or that of your daughter or granddaughter.