Here's the 'heart-wrenching' reality of post-Roe medical care for women

In new data that has yet to be released to the public, researchers at the University of California San Francisco have examined how pregnancy-related medical care has changed since the Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, according to States Newsroom.

The data includes stories of high-risk pregnancies being continued, including pregnancies that will ultimately end in the death of the fetus. This includes states where abortion is criminalized, dramatically changing the course of medical care.

The Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, part of the University of California San Francisco, launched a study specifically about pregnancy care after the ending of Roe v. Wade. All information was received confidentially or via anecdotes.

“The stories are really heart-wrenching,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, who is director of the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health.

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The data is based on an estimated 50 submissions on prenatal patients from about half of the dozen states across the U.S. that have now or previously totally or partially banned abortions. These states include traditional Republican strongholds of Arizona, Georgia and Indiana.

The study includes the fact that many pregnant women are even scared to get care in a state that has strict abortion rules, according to Grossman.

“So, they traveled long distances to another state to be evaluated," Grossman said. "And sometimes it turned out they weren’t even pregnant. Sometimes it turned out they had had a miscarriage that had actually already been completed and they didn’t need any treatment. And in one case, the patient had an ectopic pregnancy, where she should have been able to get that treatment where she lived.”

Providers told researchers about cases of premature rupture of membranes in the second trimester, Grossman said, noting that the standard of care in these cases is to offer termination, given the high risk of infection and low probability of a live birth.

“And instead, in these cases, patients were being sent home,” he said. “And then they come back with infection, and several of them developed very severe infection that required very complicated management in the intensive care unit.”

Additionally, UCSF researchers have learned about several cases of patients whose fetuses had no chance of survival but had to leave their state to have abortions, an increasingly common story.

“We hope that these findings will be useful for hospital systems as they’re trying to figure out workarounds to provide care,” Grossman said.