Doctors worried about getting sued under Texas’ restrictive abortion law have delayed treating pregnancy complications until patients’ lives were in danger, according to a paper from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project…. “People have to be on death’s door to qualify for maternal exemptions” to Texas’ current law, one maternal-fetal medicine specialist told the paper’s authors. Doctors reported that they have postponed abortion care until a patient’s health or pregnancy complication has deteriorated to the point that their life was in danger, including multiple cases where patients were sent home, only to return once they were in sepsis.
And even when patients were able to qualify for an abortion under the life-saving exemption, some doctors report being unable to get nurses or anesthesiologists to assist on these procedures for fear that they will be seen as “aiding and abetting” in an abortion
