(WXYZ) — The American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a new study this month on how state laws banning abortion when there is a heartbeat can impact a woman’s health.
The study involved 28 women whose water broke before 22 weeks at two hospitals in Texas.
The law banned doctors from inducing labor because that would be abortion. The women on average waited 9 days for delivery.
Of those, 43% experienced a severe complication such as infection or hemorrhage. One lost her uterus as a result, meaning she will not be able to have children in the future.
Doctors wrote the law banned them providing previously standard health care until the woman’s life was at risk, even if the fetus had no chance of survival.
"In two Texas hospitals, state-mandated expectant management of obstetric 91 complications in the periviable period was associated with significant maternal morbidity," the doctors wrote in their conclusion. "Consistent with reports evaluating outcomes in women requesting expectant management,4 93 the majority of pregnant patients at <22 weeks’ presenting with medical 94 indications for delivery experienced serious morbidity, and fetal outcomes were poor."
Michigan does have a 1931 law that not only bans abortion but criminalizes it, with the person being charged with either a felony or a misdemeanor.
"Any person who shall wilfully administer to any pregnant woman any medicine, drug, substance or thing whatever, or shall employ any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of any such woman, unless the same shall have been necessary to preserve the life of such woman, shall be guilty of a felony, and in case the death of such pregnant woman be thereby produced, the offense shall be deemed manslaughter," Michigan's law reads.
But, in May, a Michigan Court of Claims judge issued an injunction that temporarily blocked the enforcement of the state's 1931 abortion ban.
This latest challenge to that 1931 law comes after Governor Whitmer, who supports abortion rights — asked the State Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional.
A citizen-led effort to add abortion access into the state’s constitution is continuing. The group submitted a record-breaking 753,759 signatures to the Michigan Secretary of State, aiming to get the proposal on the November ballot.
This issue will continue to work its way through the state courts. That effort from Whitmer to have that 1931 law ruled unconstitutional is still pending.
The ruling comes in a case brought by Planned Parenthood against Attorney General Dana Nessel. The court found that although Nessel has said she would not enforce the abortion ban if Roe is overturned, that would not stop enforcement of the law in the State of Michigan.
In her ruling putting the temporary injunction into place, Judge Elizabeth Gleicher wrote that Planned Parenthood has a high likelihood of winning on the merits of their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of MCL 750.14, Michigan's abortion ban.
