Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday opened an investigation into the devastating health impacts that state-level GOP abortion bans and restrictions have had on pregnant people across the U.S., citing the litany of horror stories published in local and national newspapers in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“The stories are shocking and horrific,” Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in new letters to National Nurses United, the American Medical Association, Physicians for Reproductive Health, and other organizations as part of her effort to gather information on the consequences of newly enacted anti-abortion statutes.
“In Wisconsin, a woman ‘bled for more than 10 days from an incomplete miscarriage after emergency room staff would not remove the fetal tissue,'” Warren noted, citing a recent Washington Post story detailing how providers are struggling to navigate the confusing post-Roe legal landscape — a dynamic that has led to patients being denied care even under clearly life-threatening conditions.
Warren pointed to an NPR article about a Texas woman who was “denied medical care for days after her water broke in the 18th week of her pregnancy (well before the threshold for fetal viability), despite vomiting, passing clots of blood and yellow discharge, and exhibiting signs of infection.”
“The chance of survival for her fetus was ‘as close to zero as you’ll ever get in medicine,'” Warren wrote, quoting a passage from the July story. “But because there was still a fetal heartbeat and Texas’ abortion ban offers no definition for its ‘medical emergency’ exception, the hospital ethics committee did not approve treatment until her discharge was ‘foul’ and ‘[e]nough to make her retch.'”
Similarly appalling stories abound, growing in number each day as Republicans in dozens of states look to impose and expand abortion restrictions in their states, with the ultimate goal of outlawing the practice nationwide — a move that would have deadly effects.
GOP state laws have already forced the closure of dozens of abortion clinics across the U.S., with more likely to shutter in the coming months as Republican lawmakers in Florida, Indiana, and other states move to prohibit the reproductive health service.
“Let’s be clear: Republican politicians are risking women’s lives and health in pursuit of a dangerous, out-of-touch agenda,” Warren tweeted late Wednesday. “I’m opening an investigation into horrific reports of state abortion bans resulting in women being denied critical healthcare.”
As part of her probe, Warren is asking healthcare providers, nurses’ groups, and other organizations to share how post-Roe abortion restrictions have affected patients, hampered access to reproductive care and other services, and impacted the ability of providers and healthcare workers to “independently exercise their medical judgment.”
Recent reports of people facing severe health crises after being rejected for basic healthcare services and medications due to Republican abortion bans are “a harbinger of the threats faced by millions of women under state-imposed abortion bans and by their providers who took an oath to ‘do no harm,'” Warren wrote in her letters.
“There is no doubt,” she added, “that the blame for such tragedies lays squarely at the feet of extremist Republican state legislators who are willing to risk the lives and safety of women in their pursuit of a right-wing, misogynistic, and out-of-touch agenda.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 143 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy