This bill effectively bans all forms of birth control except condoms, other barrier methods, and the rhythm method/pull out method. No more pills, IUDs, emergency contraceptives, nothing. No tubal ligations, so women won’t even be able to sterilize themselves anymore in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
It also forces women to undergo an invasive, unnecessary procedure in order to symbolically make pro-lifers….feel better? I guess. Removing an ectopic pregnancy and then placing it in the uterus so she can then expel it is completely illogical. Dislodgment of this NONVIABLE pregnancy destroys the placental connections that have formed, effectively removing the blood supply from the embryo entirely. So even if you wanted to believe it was remotely possible for a removed ectopic pregnancy to be reimplanted into the uterus (which it isn’t), you’re effectively going to be implanting an embryo that is guaranteed to have an anoxic brain injury, at the very least, and this will most likely be occurring at the most critical time in neuro development (the first trimester) for that embryo so what exactly are we expecting to be the outcome should this pro-life fantasy even be possible? Severely brain damaged, congenitally malformed, most likely nonviable babies that the mom then has to watch die after giving birth to. Nice.
You’d literally be cutting someone open to remove dying tissue and then invasively insert that dead tissue somewhere else increasing the chance of infection and other complications.
You can treat ectopic pregnancies that have not ruptured MEDICALLY, with MEDICINE. Avoiding invasive surgery is the standard of care across this entire country. Requiring that doctors perform an invasive and unnecessary procedure instead of giving one to two pills to perform another invasive procedure that has no realistic purpose other than to make men feel better is completely unethical and puts doctors in an impossible position? Sacrifice patient safety and care or lose the license you spent at least 11 years working for, go to jail, and have no way to pay back your 6 figure loan debt?
And, finally, how would doctors reimplant this fetus (assuming it’s possible, which it isn’t)? Would they cut open the uterus and put it in there so she can miscarry “naturally”? Doing so would put her at an increased risk of placenta accreta/percreta, uterine rupture with future pregnancies, and pretty much require any future deliveries to take place via c-section which is major abdominal surgery and carries all of the risks that a surgery like that entails. Cutting the uterus open in the first trimester would require a “classical” c-section cut which puts a woman at all of the risks I stated above.
Would they insert it through the cervix? Doing so would require dilation of the cervix with laminaria and put her at risk of ectopic pregnancy on the cervix in the future.
Look. Even if I supported this law, these are legitimate questions and they should be addressed before legislation like this even makes it to the floor. Physicians and other providers MUST be consulted when crafting legislation that affects medical care. This law is telling doctors it is now illegal for them to offer the gold standard for care for treating ectopic pregnancies or providing the most reliable options for birth control available and is REQUIRING them to endanger patients so a bunch of old white guys who hate women and don’t understand biology can feel more powerful by reducing women back to brood mares.
Physicians should not and cannot be used to enforce state-sanctioned or federal laws like this. These laws are not medically ethical and they are not morally ethical and they violate human rights on multiple fronts.
