“Everyone is scared”: The harsh reality of being an OB/GYN in Post-Roe America

In Ohio, where a near-total, six-week ban has been in effect for a month, doctors have already been faced with difficult medical decisions being complicated by the legal risks that they’re now exposed to because of the state’s abortion ban. “Everyone’s scared of the legal ramifications and what’s going to happen to them,” says Dr. Melissa March, an OB/GYN and doctor of maternal and fetal medicine based in Cleveland. She described some of the cases she and others in her field have seen in the past month: a woman with a ruptured membrane and an infection in her uterus whose care was delayed by a legal consultation; a patient with an ectopic pregnancy who had to be life-flighted to another state for treatment; pregnant people with fetal abnormalities who weren’t able to travel out of state for abortion care. “Sometimes that care is delayed and sometimes that care may not occur,” Dr. March says.July 24, 2022