This state’s reproductive healthcare for women is malpractice
7th October 2024 · 0 Comments
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a law last May that effectively outlawed the use of abortion pills for medical abortions. He proudly reclassified the abortion drugs Mifepristone and Misoprostol as controlled, dangerous substances in Louisiana, a move that could have severe implications for women’s health, potentially endangering the lives of countless women.
As of last Tuesday, October 1, these pills are now Schedule IV drugs, putting them in the same category as Xanax, Valium, Tramadol, and other medicines.
During the May 2024 signing ceremony, Landry said, “I’m certainly proud to sign this bill.”
Governor Landry and his Republican allies, who lack the medical expertise, seem to be making decisions that should be left to OB-GYN physicians, raising serious concerns about the validity of the law.
It’s crucial to remember that only a physician specializing in OB/GYN treatments is qualified to determine the safety of these medications. Politicians should not make this decision.
Landry has made a mockery of the Hippocratic oath doctors take, which says, “First Do No Harm.” Letting a woman bleed out and die because she can’t get a simple D&C is not only harmful but also akin to murder.
Let’s not forget former Governor Jon Bel Edwards, a staunch Catholic, signed the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” into law in 2016 and triggered it into practice in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
He seemingly overlooked or chose to ignore the fact that the abortion ban would lead to an increase in the maternal mortality rate.
Although it took four years to release 2020 data on maternal deaths, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), on April 10, 2024, released a report that stated, “There were 82 pregnancy-associated deaths identified in 2020.”
It went on to say, “Many deaths (78%) were pregnancy-associated but not related to the pregnancy,” which included accidental overdose, homicide and motor vehicle collisions.
Another category for maternal mortality the LDH reported listed was “pregnancy-related deaths caused by cardiomyopathy, “accidental overdose,” (categorized twice) infection, and cardiovascular conditions. Except for overdoses, any doctor will tell you that infection and cardiovascular conditions during pregnancy can cause death simply from the body being in a pregnant state.
This leaves one to wonder, how does the state define a death that occurred before or during childbirth?
Of course, the report couldn’t ignore the disparate amount of maternal mortality among Black women in Louisiana.
Racial disparities exist. Thirty-seven percent of all births in Louisiana in 2020 were among non-Hispanic Black women, but non-Hispanic Black women accounted for 62 percent of all pregnancy-associated deaths.
While the report didn’t offer remedies to stop the deaths of so many pregnant Black women, it did admit that many deaths were potentially preventable.
“The review of each death determined that 93% of pregnancy-related deaths and 81% of pregnancy-associated, but not related deaths were potentially preventable,” according to the report.
The World Population Review researched Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate. It concluded that Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate of 58.1 deaths per 100,000 births is the highest in the United States.
The report also found that the maternal mortality rate is about four times higher for Black mothers than it is for white mothers, an issue that boils down to implicit bias. Fifty-nine percent of Black maternal deaths are preventable compared to nine percent of white maternal deaths.
NPR’s coverage of a March 2024 report on Louisiana’s abortion ban is damning.
“Pregnant women have been given risky, unnecessary surgeries, denied swift treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, and forced to wait until their life is at risk before getting an abortion,” according to a Lift Louisiana Report titled “Criminalized Care: How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Endanger Patients and Clinicians.”
Patients and doctors were interviewed for the report.
One patient with an ectopic pregnancy said her care was delayed so long that her fallopian tubes ruptured. “I could have died,” she said in the report. “I really could have died.”
The doctors described numerous cases in the report in which seriously ill patients were denied abortions until they became so sick that their lives were irrefutably at risk. These included pregnant women with cancer, patients with heart problems and kidney failure who were on dialysis and hospitalized and women who’d experienced life-threatening complications from previous pregnancies and found themselves pregnant again.
In one case, an OB-GYN treating a patient with severe heart failure was first required to prescribe multiple cardiac medicines before being allowed to offer an abortion.
Abortion was already banned in Louisiana for any reason other than saving the life of the pregnant patient – an exclusion that doctors have previously pointed out is complex and, ironically, actively more life-threatening for both them and the fetus, IFLScience notes in “Lives Put At Risk As Safe Medications Reclassified As ‘Controlled Dangerous Substances’ In Louisiana.”
The pills are not just for inducing abortions. Mifepristone can be used to treat hyperglycemia in patients with Cushing’s syndrome – a condition in which the body is exposed to too much cortisol – and misoprostol can be used to prevent stomach ulcers or to prepare the uterus for procedures such as IUD insertion. More critically, it can also be a vital drug to stop hemorrhaging in labor – the cause of almost one in seven maternal deaths in the U.S.
“It’s just really jaw-dropping,” said Dr. Nicole Freehill, a New Orleans OB-GYN and one of more than 250 doctors who signed a letter to Republican state Senator Thomas Pressly – the bill’s sponsor who appeared to forget the name of one of the drugs while introducing the bill – in protest against the legislation back in May.
You would think Louisiana has more significant problems than policing women’s wombs.
Louisiana ranks last in the U.S. News & World Report’s Best States Overall Category. The state also ranks #50 in Crime and Corrections, #49 in Economy, #47 in Education, #41 in Fiscal Stability, #46 in Health Care, #49 in Infrastructure, #49 in Natural Environment, and #44 in Opportunity.
This article originally published in the October 7, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
