The Future of Miscarriage Care in Post-Roe America
Last Tuesday, I listened to another interesting podcast by the Daily about distrust in the healthcare system in Texas. The podcast follows a young lady, Amanda, who lives in the Dallas Fort-Worth area and describes her struggle with miscarriages. In 2021, Amanda was 10 weeks along in her pregnancy when she heard the devastating news that there was no heartbeat in the embryo. The doctor recommended that she have a surgical procedure to remove the tissue in the uterus. This procedure is called dilation and curettage or D&C. It is a very common procedure used to remove the tissue after a miscarriage to prevent infection and bleeding. Amanda had a very pleasant experience as she was comforted by the nurses and she was sent home with flowers and pain medication. She was given the support and care that she needed, unlike the next time when she had a miscarriage several months later. During Amanda’s second miscarriage, she experienced a lot of pain and discomfort. Her instinct was to go to the same hospital where she received an ultrasound to confirm that there was no cardiac activity, so she asked for a D&C and was denied. They told her to go home and to only return if she was “excessively bleeding” (if the blood fills a diaper in an hour) and then she would have only 30 minutes before she was hemorrhaging. This was an extremely different treatment from the first time she went to the hospital. Amanda suffered more pain from the cramps and a lot of bleeding, but never returned to the hospital. She was prescribed muscle relaxers after her husband begged them to prescribe them for her. She continued to bleed for a week, almost similar to a bad period when she was able to pass all the tissue without infection. However, this was a very traumatic and excruciating experience for her because not only did she not receive a D&C, she was not comforted emotionally.
Amanda’s second miscarriage was treated differently due to the strict abortion laws Texas passed between her miscarriages. These strict laws restricted most abortions after six weeks of pregancy, becoming the most restrictive abortion law in the country. The legislation also created a greater stigma and vigilantism around abortions. Amanda believed that there was a hostile environment created around abortions that led to the hospital to treat her second miscarriage differently. The D&C used to treat miscarriages is also used to treat abortion cases, and the suspicion that the doctors had that they were treating an abortion and not a miscarriage was enough to deny Amanda the medical procedure.
This is only a small look into what post-Roe America is going to look like. Although conservative publications might argue that pro-life laws will not affect miscarriage treatment, restricting abortion access clearly does have negative consequences for healthcare providers and for women seeking proper medical care. Many women like Amanda will be sent home during a miscarriage in fear of someone reporting them for treating an abortion. One in ten known pregnancies end in miscarriage and abortion laws are going to put women needing miscarriage treatment at high risk. Miscarriage treatment is healthcare and many women might face the same challenges Amanda did, or even worse.
