A Louisiana woman who miscarried at 16 weeks was forced to endure a painful, bloody and traumatic labor and delivery, according to an affidavit from her OB/GYN, after she was denied a simple 15-minute procedure because of an abortion ban by the State. “She was already traumatized by her experience and felt that an induction, which would require labor and delivery of the fetus, would be too much for her,” Dr. Valerie Williams said in court documents obtained by Insider. But the hospital’s attorney immediately told Williams she couldn’t do the D&E because of Louisiana’s trigger ban. “Going back into that hospital room and telling the patient she was going to have to be induced and push the fetus out was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had,” Williams said. Williams’ affidavit, filed in Louisiana’s 19th Circuit Court as part of a lawsuit against the state, provided multiple examples of how Louisiana’s abortion ban that went into effect automatically last month when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has already affected reproductive health and directly harmed her patients. Abortion access in Louisiana has fluctuated several times in recent weeks. Currently, a temporary restraining order is in place allowing access to abortion while the matter is being heard. On Tuesday, Judge Donald Johnson ordered the TRO to remain in place until July 29. But when Louisiana’s abortion ban went into effect earlier in July, Williams said one of her patients’ water broke as early as 16 weeks pregnant — too early to be viable. Williams said her patient requested a procedure called D&E, which stands for dilation and evacuation, which will quickly and safely end the pregnancy in about 15 minutes. Instead of performing the D&E, Williams had to watch while her patient was “forced through a painful, hours-long labor to deliver a non-viable fetus, against her wishes and against her best medical advice.” Williams said her patient took additional hours to deliver the placenta, began bleeding and lost nearly a pint of blood before Williams was able to stop the bleeding. “He was screaming — not from pain, but from the emotional trauma he was going through,” Williams said. “There is absolutely no medical basis for my patient, or any other patient in this situation, to experience this. This was the first time in my 15-year career that I was unable to give a patient the care they needed. A travesty ». That wasn’t Williams’ only horror story. Her affidavit also described a patient who became pregnant despite using birth control and sought an abortion the weekend after the Supreme Court ruling. “She told me she was hoping the pregnancy was ectopic so she could get treatment in Louisiana instead of having to leave the state,” Williams said, referring to a pregnancy in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus and must be removed. “It’s horrible that patients are hoping to have a life-threatening health complication so they can get the proper care,” Williams said. Williams and other Louisiana abortion providers have argued that the state’s enabling law is too vague. The law makes exceptions for “medically futile” pregnancies and for abortions that would prevent “death or substantial risk of death to the pregnant woman.” But state law doesn’t provide the necessary information about what constitutes a “medically futile” pregnancy, they said, even though under the state’s enabling law, doctors could face up to 15 years in prison if they perform abortions. which do not fall under them. exceptions. Louisiana officials defended the law and said no further clarification was needed. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry wrote in a court filing that the state law “needs only to delineate what is illegal – not to define what is legal.”
