Miscarriages are common, but abortion bans are putting patients’ lives in danger

A miscarriage is one of the most common medical problems a pregnant person may experience. Now, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, patients who need medical care for a miscarriage face new risks.  

Miscarriage is defined as the loss of a pregnancy before the 20th week, with the majority of miscarriages happening before the 12th week of pregnancy. Out of some 5 million pregnancies each year in the United States, 1 million end in miscarriages, according to the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Alhambra Frarey, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania, said she had to leave her obstetrics and gynecology residency at a training hospital in Kansas because the hospital did not provide abortions except in cases in which the pregnant person’s life was in danger. 

“If you are not training in routine abortion care as a resident, as a family medicine resident, as an OB-GYN resident, you most certainly do not know how to do a lifesaving procedure, whether that’s an induced abortion that is lifesaving because somebody is bleeding but the fetus still has cardiac activity, or whether that’s a miscarriage where somebody is infected, septic, and needs their uterus emptied. It is the same procedure,” Frarey told the Pennsylvania Independent.

Frarey continued her residency training in Colorado. She then went on to do a two-year fellowship in complex family planning to learn the skills she felt she hadn’t been taught in her residency programs.

Frarey said she firmly believes that more women will die if a federal abortion ban is put into place. She cited the case of Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman in Georgia who died of severe complications from a medical abortion after doctors stalled her care due to fear of the state’s six-week abortion ban. 

“That exact same complication could happen in the setting of a miscarriage. … I very much think that, in the setting of a national abortion ban, in the setting of not having a supportive governor in Pennsylvania, that we could face the exact same dystopian reality that we’re seeing in 21 states now across the U.S.” 

Abortion is currently legal until up to 24 weeks of pregnancy in Pennsylvania. It is likely to remain so under Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose term doesn’t end for another three years. 

Frarey said that having worked in a state with an abortion ban and now working in Pennsylvania, she is struck by how different the care is for patients. 

“The fact that you’ve chosen to make your life in a certain community shouldn’t indicate whether you have access to lifesaving care,” Frarey said. “Induced abortion is certainly life-affirming and lifesaving care and extremely important, but there are these downstream repercussions that so many people don’t understand, that it is the exact same procedure to save somebody who is hemorrhaging from their miscarriage.”