The Center for Reproductive Rights filed legal actions in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma on behalf of women who say they were denied abortion care in medical emergencies.
Allie Phillips, 28, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the state of Tennessee that was filed Tuesday by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Antiabortion groups accuse their opponents of exaggerating the risks to pregnant individuals, dismissing legal actions at the state level as “scare tactics” because abortion rights groups are losing the federal battle. What’s more, they said, broadly written exceptions could allow any abortion clinic to find a health exception to justify the procedure.
Blackmon stopped taking her anti-inflammatory medication to protect the fetus, she said. But a routine, 15-week ultrasound revealed the baby’s stomach and other organs were developing outside its abdomen, as well as showing signs of a lethal malformation known as limb body wall complex, the lawsuit said. In the following weeks, as further tests confirmed the diagnoses, Blackmon said her health worsened.
“Going through all of that, I don’t want no one to have to suffer or just have to bear the things that I went through. I was lucky enough to survive all of that, but the next person might not be lucky,” Blackmon said. “It made me frightened to go through another pregnancy.” “What has changed a lot of people’s minds have been these high-profile cases of people who have very wanted pregnancies, but nonetheless have been told, ‘Sorry, we cannot provide you care,’” said Rebouché, who noted that abortion access is now the focus of several recent ballot initiatives across the country.
The strategy of showing the alleged harm that people with complicated pregnancies have suffered is one front in the abortion battles that have moved largely to the states in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
But Hearron said the Texas suit was revelatory to people who heard the testimony. “Many people who don’t think they know somebody who has had an abortion are now realizing it affects all of us,” he said.The testimony also encouraged women in other states to speak out about their experiences, he said.
“I can’t stop bad things from happening to people’s pregnancies,” Adkins said. “But I want other Idahoans to feel safe and cared for.”Most of the 14 states where abortion is banned have exceptions for medical emergencies, according to KFF, a health policy organization that tracks state laws. Many doctors have argued that those exceptions are written in nonmedical language and fail to reflect the health risks to a mother that come with pregnancy and childbirth.
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