Health care providers, who are at the center of a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, say the new law has limited their ability to care for patients whose well-being could be at risk.
But state attorneys invited medical providers from abroad — including a Texas obstetrician-gynecologist whose credibility was high questioned by a judge in Florida this summer – to argue that Georgian law leaves room for doctors to use their best judgment when faced with a medical emergency that threatens a pregnant woman’s life.
Debate over the narrow exceptions included in Georgia’s abortion ban was the focus of a two-day trial focused on whether the state’s six-week ban on most abortions violated the state’s constitutional law on privacy.
The attempt played out in downtown Atlanta — just a few blocks from where the 2019 law was passed — in the courtroom of Judge Robert CI McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court. Both sides will file further briefings next month to advance a decision on the controversial law beyond the Nov. 8 election.
The attorneys representing health care providers and abortion rights advocates who are challenging the law argue that the law is far too restrictive and has made health care providers reluctant to perform an abortion that might fall under the permitted exceptions.
They argue that the law, which went into effect in July after the Supreme Court ruled Roe v. Wade and the matter should be put on the ballot for voters to decide.
Under the law, medical providers risk being charged with a crime — and potentially losing their license.
“The medicine hasn’t changed, and the advice and risks are the same,” said Dr. Martina Badell, director of the Emory Perinatal Centers. “The difference is that now, as (healthcare) providers in the state, we have to weigh the risks of criminal prosecution if we proceed with an abortion and what we believe is the best medical decision a patient is making for her body.” .”
Badell said she has stopped offering what is called multiple pregnancy reduction, a procedure that reduces the number of fetuses when, for example, a woman is expecting triplets.
The lack of certainty about what exactly qualifies as a medical emergency has left Badell feeling like her hands are tied, she said.
“It’s heartbreaking to say to someone – and when they’ve come to the conclusion that this is the right thing for their family – that I have to say, ‘Well, I wish you all the best and good luck. I hope you have the resources and the wherewithal to get the care you desire,'” she said.
Even more harrowing, she said, is trying to decide when a threat to a woman’s life is sufficient for medical intervention under the law.
“‘Necessary to prevent one death’ – is that a death we think is 1% likely?” 10% likely? 20%?” Badell said. “It’s unclear at what risk of death the pregnant person would be considered ‘necessary’.”
However, a North Carolina doctor testifying in defense of the law argued that the restrictions do not prevent doctors in Georgia from performing multiple pregnancy reduction because it might not harm a woman’s reproductive system.
In addition to life-threatening situations, Georgian law permits abortion when deemed necessary to prevent “significant and irreversible physical impairment of an important bodily function in a pregnant woman.”
The law also continues to allow abortions when the fetus is deemed “medically hopeless” based on “reasonable medical evaluation,” which critics of the law also say is too vague.
“We make heartbreaking decisions all day, every day,” said Dr. Jeffrey Wright, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who does not practice in Georgia. “I mean, if I take that call, it won’t be a kitten or a puppy, right? It will be another heartbreaking decision and that is what we are doing as maternal fetal medicine specialists.”
Links to anti-abortion advocacy
Another state witness, Dr. Ingrid Skop argued that caring for pregnant women has always been a risky field.
Skop is the director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, affiliated with the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. A Florida judge then questioned Skop’s credibility she defended the state’s 15-week ban this summer.
“It’s part of our job to recognize that we might make a decision and someone can guess after the fact,” Skop said Tuesday in the Atlanta courtroom. “So it’s always been like that.
“I understand that the word ‘crime’ is scary. I understand that. But there’s nothing this law tells doctors to do or not do that we haven’t always done. We have always intervened when it was necessary to save a woman’s life.”
Another proponent of the Georgia law, Priscilla Coleman, also made her controversial argument that abortion is harmful to women’s mental health. Georgian law excludes psychiatric disorders from the medical emergency exemption, even if the woman is at risk of suicide.
“You’ll probably feel even worse if you break off. It’s not going to solve your problem,” Coleman said.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys, who work at the ACLU of Georgia and the Center for Reproductive Rights, also question Coleman’s credibility, showing that some of the reviewers of her study are affiliated with anti-abortion advocacy groups.
The judge questioned the justification for excluding mental health in the law.
“But when the medic — a psychiatrist — the medic states, ‘Hey, this is someone who isn’t going to feel any better if she carries to term, and it’s my diagnosis that if she doesn’t, she’s probably going to kill herself the pregnancy can end.’ How is that a better result to say that this is not a medical exception? I’m just trying to understand the data that would support that finding,” McBurney said.
Coleman dismissed the scenario as an isolated case.
“When laws are made, they should address what is best for most people in the state,” she said.
