Hospitals are facing questions about why they denied care to pregnant patients and whether state abortion bans have influenced how they treat those patients.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent inquiries to nine hospitals ahead of a hearing Tuesday looking at whether abortion bans have prevented or delayed pregnant women from getting help during their miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other medical emergencies.
Republicans on Tuesday assailed the hearing, with outright denials about the impact abortion laws have on the medical care women in the U.S. have received, and called the hearing a politically-motivated attack just weeks ahead of the presidential election. Republicans, who are noticeably nervous about how the new abortion laws will play into the presidential race, lodged repeated complaints about the hearing’s title, “How Trump Criminalized Women’s Health Care.”
I’m biased but putting the onus on doctors here completely misses the point in my opinion. Let me just point out that this isn’t a “policy change” - these states have made it illegal to perform these procedures. In at least one state the physician can go to prison.
In an idealistic worldview we can expect every person to do the morally optimal thing every time without regard to consequences but that simply isn’t realistic. You are basically advocating that physicians should be jumping to break the law and therefore endanger themselves. That just is not a realistic expectation of any person.
Tl;dr - Physicians are just people and are not the ones that created this situation. They are normal people and expecting them to sacrifice career/freedom to help one patient is beyond what is realistic.