Doctors say that exemptions to abortion laws are so narrow and the penalties for making the wrong decision so harsh that they have to choose between putting patient lives at risk or putting themselves in legal jeopardy
Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a high-risk obstetrician in Chattanooga, Tenn., recently saw a pregnant patient with rising blood pressure who the doctor believed could be facing a serious health emergency.
More than 700 medical professionals, including obstetricians and emergency room doctors, published a letter to the Tennessee General Assembly this week asking it to revise the state’s law, saying it “criminalizes physicians for providing lifesaving care.” Idaho and North Dakota also have laws that criminalize all abortions and provide doctors with defenses they can use in court. Ohio lawmakers are set to debate a similar law in the coming weeks. In other states, doctors can’t be charged with a crime for ending a pregnancy as long as it was to save the life of the mother, although some providers say it can still be hard to know how dire a situation must be to qualify.
Chloe Akers, a criminal defense attorney based in Knoxville, Tenn., read the law after Roe fell and was surprised to see it contained no exceptions, only defenses that doctors could use after the fact. She founded a nonprofit Standing Together Tennessee and began giving seminars to doctors and others about the law.
“As time goes on and we see that no one is being prosecuted for doing abortions, I think this fear becomes very unsubstantiated,” Mr. Linton said.
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