When pregnancy risks meet abortion and health care laws
Even before the wave of abortion bans, medical treatment and pregnancy counseling largely focused on the safety of the fetus rather than that of the mother.
As the United States grapples with the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a question lurks between court opinions and news reports: Why are pregnancy risks so rare? discussed anywhere, even if this information is relevant not only to individual decisions, but also to policies regarding abortion, pregnancy, and women's health care?
As the wave of abortion bans take place in US states, these risks will come into greater focus - appearing both in women's decisions about the risk of getting pregnant if they live in a State that has banned abortions, and the arguments that will occur in state legislative chambers over what threat to a mother's health must be present to permit an abortion under untested and rapidly changing state laws .
"We spend an awful lot of time talking about avoidance behaviors because of the very small risks that could happen that are associated with the fetus. "Don't eat germs soy" or "don't eat deli ace,'" Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University and author of "Expecting Better," a book based on pregnancy data, told me. "And then we never tell people about the risks of things that are almost certainly going to happen."
For example, during a vaginal birth, "Your vagina is going to It's going to be very heartbreaking," she said. "It's not even a risk, it's just realistic. a significant recovery period.
And more serious complications, although rare, are not so rare.In any group of mothers, someone has likely survived hyperemesis gravidarum (which can occur in up to 1 in 30 pregnancies), ectopic pregnancy (up to 1 in 50 pregnancies), or pregnancy-induced hypertensive disorder (up to 1 in out of 30. 10 pregnancies) All of these conditions can be fatal. rm of risk is informed consent: awareness of the potential for harm and the ability to accept or refuse it. If traveling by car or flying meant near-guaranteed abdominal or genital injury and a 10% risk of fatality, people would expect a warning and an opportunity to question whether the journey was worth it. .
But pregnancy is different.
ImageDoctors in Jakarta, Indonesia, performing a cesarean delivery.Credit...Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJonathan Lord, English practicing gynecologist and medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, an organization that provides family planning and abortion services in countries around the world, said that he suspects that people often don't talk about the dangers of pregnancy to women's health because they view such conversations as a cause of unnecessary distress. "It's kind of ingrained in society, really. It's not so much a medical thing, but people don't talk about the ri...
Even before the wave of abortion bans, medical treatment and pregnancy counseling largely focused on the safety of the fetus rather than that of the mother.
As the United States grapples with the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a question lurks between court opinions and news reports: Why are pregnancy risks so rare? discussed anywhere, even if this information is relevant not only to individual decisions, but also to policies regarding abortion, pregnancy, and women's health care?
As the wave of abortion bans take place in US states, these risks will come into greater focus - appearing both in women's decisions about the risk of getting pregnant if they live in a State that has banned abortions, and the arguments that will occur in state legislative chambers over what threat to a mother's health must be present to permit an abortion under untested and rapidly changing state laws .
"We spend an awful lot of time talking about avoidance behaviors because of the very small risks that could happen that are associated with the fetus. "Don't eat germs soy" or "don't eat deli ace,'" Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University and author of "Expecting Better," a book based on pregnancy data, told me. "And then we never tell people about the risks of things that are almost certainly going to happen."
For example, during a vaginal birth, "Your vagina is going to It's going to be very heartbreaking," she said. "It's not even a risk, it's just realistic. a significant recovery period.
And more serious complications, although rare, are not so rare.In any group of mothers, someone has likely survived hyperemesis gravidarum (which can occur in up to 1 in 30 pregnancies), ectopic pregnancy (up to 1 in 50 pregnancies), or pregnancy-induced hypertensive disorder (up to 1 in out of 30. 10 pregnancies) All of these conditions can be fatal. rm of risk is informed consent: awareness of the potential for harm and the ability to accept or refuse it. If traveling by car or flying meant near-guaranteed abdominal or genital injury and a 10% risk of fatality, people would expect a warning and an opportunity to question whether the journey was worth it. .
But pregnancy is different.
ImageDoctors in Jakarta, Indonesia, performing a cesarean delivery.Credit...Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJonathan Lord, English practicing gynecologist and medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, an organization that provides family planning and abortion services in countries around the world, said that he suspects that people often don't talk about the dangers of pregnancy to women's health because they view such conversations as a cause of unnecessary distress. "It's kind of ingrained in society, really. It's not so much a medical thing, but people don't talk about the ri...
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