AUSTIN, Texas — 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.Harrison, an Austin attorney, learned late last year that one of her twins was not going to survive outside the womb. Her doctors advised her to travel out of state for a selective reduction to terminate the nonviable fetus.
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.”
“Unfortunately, the increased requirements for documentation are truly unworkable,” testified Dr. Richard Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN. “The need for literature searches, attempts to transfer patients by any means available, documentation of how we determined a woman’s danger of death or serious risks, the need for consultations or opinions of medical ethics committees, attempts at alternative treatments and determination of a woman’s risk to support a particular method of termination.
Dr. Ingrid Skopp, a leading anti-abortion OB/GYN based in San Antonio, testified that she has seen firsthand what happens when doctors hesitate to act. Last week, she said, she treated a woman in the emergency room who was hemorrhaging from a miscarriage that had been diagnosed two weeks earlier. Her doctor required her to have a follow-up ultrasound before he would surgically remove the fetal tissue, she said.
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