WASHINGTON (AP) — Hospitals are facing questions about why they are not providing care to pregnant patients and whether the state’s abortion ban has affected how they treat those patients.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent questions to nine hospitals ahead of a Tuesday hearing looking into whether the abortion ban has prevented pregnant women from getting care for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies.
He is part of a Democratic effort to draw the nation’s attention to the stories of women who have faced horrific realities since some states adopted a patchwork of abortion laws that have created chaos and hesitation in emergency rooms, Wyden said during Tuesday’s hearing.
“Some states that have passed abortion bans claim to have exceptions when a woman’s life is in danger,” Wyden said. “In reality, these exceptions force doctors to play lawyer. And lawyers to play doctors. Health care providers struggle to make impossible decisions between providing intensive care or facing possible jail time.”
Republicans on Tuesday attacked the hearing, with outright denials about the impact abortion laws have had on the medical care women in the U.S. have received, calling the hearing a politically motivated attack just weeks before the presidential election. Republicans, who are noticeably nervous about how the new abortion laws will play out in the presidential race, repeatedly complained about the title of the hearing, “How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care.”
“Unfortunately, as evidenced by the overtly partisan nature of the title, it appears that the purpose of today’s hearing is to score political points against the former president,” said Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, a Republican.
Federal law requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to patients, a mandate the Biden administration argues includes abortions needed to save a woman’s health or life. But abortion advocates have argued the law also requires hospitals to stabilize a fetus. The Senate Finance Committee comes into the picture because it oversees Medicare funding, which can be revoked if a hospital violates federal law.
The Associated Press reported that more than 100 women have been denied care in emergency rooms nationwide since 2022. The women were turned away in states with and without strict abortion bans, but doctors in Florida and Missouri, for example, in some cases said they could not provide patients with the treatment they needed because of the states’ abortion bans. Wyden sent letters to four of the hospitals included in the AP reports, as well as to a hospital at the center of a ProPublica report that found a Georgia woman died after doctors delayed her treatment.
Several Republicans say reports of women being turned away are the result of misinformation or a misunderstanding of abortion laws.
Gynecologist Amelia Huntsberger told the committee that she was very familiar with Idaho’s abortion law, which initially allowed abortions only if a woman was at risk of dying, when it went into effect in 2022. So was her husband, an emergency room doctor. A year ago, they packed up and moved their family to Oregon.
“It was clear that it was inevitable: If we stayed in Idaho, at some point there was going to be a conflict between what a patient needed and what the laws allowed,” Huntsberger said.
Huntsberger is not alone. Idaho has lost nearly 50 gynecologists since the state’s abortion ban was implemented.
