“We are going to see more deaths and more injuries,” Ghazaleh Moayedi, an ob-gyn in Dallas, said. “I don’t have to speculate about that at all.”
“We are training more people every day,” Moayedi said. “But where those skills are concentrated is not equitable.” What’s more, in states where abortion is banned, the diminishing number of trained abortion providers will have fewer opportunities to maintain their expertise for when emergency situations demand it. “I haven’t been able to provide later-abortion care in Texas since September, and any skilled surgeon will tell you that if you don’t use it you lose it,” Moayedi said. “You have to continually practice surgical skills to remain at the top of your game.” She mentioned that several of her colleagues have already moved out of state. “It is completely understandable. They have trained for so long, and for what?”
Moayedi and other providers told me they are optimistic that the availability of abortion pills will help people who are early in pregnancy obtain clandestine abortions. (Multiple states, however, are drafting legislation to criminalize distribution of these medications.) “But that is very different from people with desired pregnancies who have later-pregnancy complications,” Moayedi said—there is no mail-order pill for that. “We are going to see more deaths and more injuries. I don’t have to speculate about that at all.”
If Roe falls, Zahedi said, “then I might have to look at a patient who has something catastrophic going on and say, ‘You can seek abortion, but I can’t do anything about it here in the state of Tennessee. You need to go three states out to someone you completely do not know.’ ” She went on, “When lawmakers place themselves between my patient and me, it removes the component of trust in the relationship. They can’t trust me to take care of them, because I can’t.”
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