Doctors, lawyers and advocates say the Texas Medical Board’s new guidance still doesn’t clarify when doctors can legally perform abortions.
“These decisions should be made by a patient in consultation with their physicians, because that is the practice of medicine. We as physicians want to work within the confines of the law, but we cannot do so if our hands are tied.”
Harrison, an Austin attorney, learned late last year that one of her twins was not going to survive outside the womb. Her doctors advised her to travel out of state for a selective reduction to terminate the nonviable fetus. “I thought that exception applied until I heard you today,” Louise Joy, an attorney who advises Texas hospitals, said to Carlton. “But that’s the very confusion we have.”
But after Steve and Amy Bresnen, Austin attorneys and health lobbyists, filed an official petition, the board conceded, issuing this first proposal in March. At Monday’s stakeholder hearing, doctors, lawyers and advocates across the political spectrum testified that the guidance did not clarify when doctors can act and, in fact, adds additional confusion.
Several speakers criticized the aspect of the guidance that tells doctors to document whether there was time to transfer a patient to another facility to avoid terminating the pregnancy. This provision“The requirement to determine when there was an adequate time to transfer the patient by any means available is so vague as to be unworkable,” testified Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Skopp said her fellow doctors’ fears were “irrational,” but called on the medical board to clearly reassure them that they can rely on their reasonable medical judgment to decide when to perform an abortion.
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