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‘A scary time’: Fear of prosecution forces doctors to choose between protecting themselves or their patients
Last Wednesday, a patient walked into Julie Rhee’s fertility clinic in St. Louis with pelvic pain that was getting steadily worse. She had a history of ectopic pregnancies and, following months of IVF treatment, was showing all the signs of another one. A recently implanted embryo was growing inside the fragile walls of her fallopian tube, threatening to burst them open and cause internal bleeding at any moment. She needed surgery, and fast. For the first time, though, Rhee discovered her clinical judgment wasn’t enough. She would have to present her case to a hospital ethics committee.
In the days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Missouri was one of several states that rushed to pass legislation that bans physicians from terminating a pregnancy unless the mother’s life is in immediate danger. Physicians like Rhee risk losing their medical license and more than a decade of prison time if they violate these laws, so doctors and hospitals are taking no chances.
