When Sarah Harrison addressed the Texas Medical Board at a virtual hearing Monday, she added her name to the growing list of Texas women who have shared stories of being denied medically necessary abortions.
Doctors, lawyers and advocates say the state board’s new guidance still doesn’t clarify when doctors can legally perform abortions.
On Monday, Harrison asked the medical board to more explicitly inform doctors they can perform selective reductions if continuing the pregnancy threatens the other fetus’ life. She pointed to the part of the law that says it is not an abortion if it is intended to “save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child.”
Later in the hearing, a retired OB/GYN said he didn’t believe Harrison would have qualified for an abortion in Texas. Then, a health lawyer weighed in to say she agreed with Harrison’s interpretation of the law. “If the board was perfect, which we’re certainly not, then that would be it,” Zaafran said. “But having 1,000 sets of eyes highlighting things that we may have overlooked and blind spots that we may not have been able to highlight.”The Texas Medical Board initially resisted calls to issue guidance to doctors on how to interpret the state’s new abortion laws.
Zaafran said it wasn't the board’s intent to require a doctor to document all of these things, or to document anything before acting in an emergency situation. He said the board would work to clarify that language. “He could have intervened and spared the woman the emotionally and physically traumatic experience that she had in my emergency room,” Skopp testified. “Stories like this abound in Texas not because of the laws but because of the failure of hospitals and medical industry organizations to provide guidance to physicians.”
“We should not force pregnant Texans to get sicker or to wait for an inevitable miscarriage and go through childbirth to deliver a baby that has died or will certainly die,” Cox testified. “It is medically reasonable to give mothers and families the best chance at building their families which may include terminating a non-viable pregnancy so they can have a chance at a viable one. I needed that chance.
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