When Izabela, from her hospital bed in Poland, sent this text message to her mother, she clearly understood the outrageous policy that led to the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland in 2012.
"The baby weighs 485 grams. For now, thanks to the abortion law, I have to lie down. And there is nothing they can do. They'll wait until it dies or something begins, and if not, I can expect sepsis," Izabela said in a text message to her mother, private broadcaster TVN24 reported. (Reuters)
The medical staff at her hospital used the uterus of Izabela as a hospice to provide palliative care for an abnormal, dying fetus, while ignoring the deterioration the pregnant woman who did, in fact, die of sepsis.
Izabela almost certainly knew what had happened to Ireland’s Savita Halappanavar. On Oct. 21, 2012, Savita, then17 weeks pregnant, presented at University Hospital Galway complaining of back pain and was discharged without diagnosis. She returned later that same day, saying that she felt pressure lower in her abdomen. This time examination showed that the gestational sac was protruding from her body. The medical staff determined that miscarriage and death of the fetus was unavoidable, and Savita was admitted to the hospital. The hospital repeatedly denied requests that she and her husband made for an abortion. After several days, her water broke, but she still did not expel the fetus. Finally, weakened, sickened, and in pain, she was somehow able to produce a miscarriage. It was too late. She died early in the morning of Oct 28, after her sepsis had become irreversible.*
Notice that neither Izabela nor Savita was protected by the laws that made an exception for the mother’s life in abortion cases. That is because the fetus is protected by the stringent punishments of criminal law while the pregnant woman is only protected by civil law. Savita’s husband sued the hospital and received some undisclosed settlement, but that is a minor, everyday, outcome for medical staffs and hospitals. Malpractice insurance covers problems such as Savita’s death.
Contrast the experience of Izabela and Savita with that of two following two people who dealt with miscarriage while Roe was still the law of the land here in the U.S.
In the latest issue of Elle, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. recalls the miscarriage of his wife.
[My then-wife and I] were expecting a second child, a child that we wanted and were looking forward to bringing into the world. But toward the end of the second trimester, her water broke. We knew something was really wrong. The physician said, “There’s no way this fetus can survive.” But because there was a faint fetal heartbeat, he had to get approval from the hospital board. And I’ll never forget listening to the message on the answering machine as he said, “I’m very sorry to say the hospital refused my request.” He said he was fearful that my wife had an infection, and that if she waited any longer to have an abortion she could lose her uterus. He said, “If you wait even longer, you’ll lose your life.” We were fortunate a friend of ours is an administrator at a different hospital, and he was able to get us in immediately.
Representative Jackie Speier of California had a second trimester miscarriage, which she also recounted in Elle.
I was 40 years old when I had my abortion at 17 weeks. The fetus had slipped through the cervix into the vagina. They put me upside down in a hospital bed, trying to have the fetus return to the uterus, and it just wasn’t happening. So I decided that it was time to have the abortion.
Jackie Spier had the medical experience everyone is entitled to. Many though, will find themselves in hospitals that are antiabortion, even in Blue states. If they are unfortunate enough to find themselves in Catholic hospitals, or other antiabortion hospitals, they will find there lives at risk. How many people are friends with the administrator of a hospital nearby that can take you in when your initial hospital refuses to give you a medically necessary abortion? In anti-Roe states there may not be a medically responsible hospital within a thousand miles. As in all other forms of health care abuse and neglect, Black Americans and other oppressed groups will suffer the most and almost always find themselves trapped.
After Roe falls there will be more extreme miscarriage abuse here in the U.S. Inevitably. And the situation will be even worse because an increasingly major form of illegal abortions will be medication abortion, which cannot be distinguished from a miscarriage. Antiabortionists, who find their misogyny thwarted will be even more eager to surveil pregnancies, and especially miscarriages.
Education on medical abortion and education on miscarriage are essential for surviving the coming antiabortionist onslaught.