Doctors Say Patients Are Scared to Ask Basic Pregnancy Questions in Chilling Senate Briefing

Dennard’s remarks before Senate Democrats come as legal experts and patients have raised concerns about privacy and the threat of health decisions—or even miscarriages and pregnancy complications—being policed since Roe fell. In March, another plaintiff in the aforementioned Texas lawsuit told the New York Times that when she learned about her terminal fetal diagnosis, she and her husband “didn’t even feel safe Googling options” out of fear of surveillance and prosecution. As a result of receiving severely delayed emergency abortion care due to Texas’ ban, the woman, Amanda Zurawski, contracted sepsis twice and had such intense scar tissue that one of her fallopian tubes permanently closed.

Dr. Serina Floyd, another OB/GYN and chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., also spoke on Wednesday and similarly attested to how the threat of criminalization has fundamentally changed conversations in examination rooms. “The effects aren’t felt only by abortion providers. Practitioners of various medical disciplines—OB/GYN, emergency medicine, primary care—are being forced to question whether they can provide care in line with their medical judgment and expertise,” Floyd said, referencing the experiences of health care providers in states where abortion is banned. She continued, “Providers and their teams are attempting to make sense of confusing and ambiguous laws, while managing the fear and anxiety of possible criminalization, just for doing their jobs.”

In February 2023, Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who attended Wednesday’s briefing, introduced a bill to ban medical providers from disclosing information on abortion or pregnancy loss without patients’ consent in court proceedings. Shortly after, the Biden administration’s Health and Human Services Department introduced a new rule last April to prevent health care workers from reporting patients to the police if they suspect them of self-managing an abortion. Polling from Data for Progress has shown 80% of likely voters prefer stronger privacy protections for patients’ reproductive health records.

“Evidence shows that women denied abortion care are more likely to experience serious medical conditions during the end of pregnancy, more likely to remain in violent relationships, and are more likely to experience economic hardship and financial insecurity,” Floyd said.

The senate briefing delved into a range of extreme conditions that abortion bans have inflicted on patients and providers, from a child rape victim in Ohio forced to travel to Indiana for abortion care, to people with nonviable fetuses (including at least one case of a young Texan woman whose fetus lacked a head) being denied abortions. “Why would anyone want to deliberately create a world where women are forced to be walking coffins?” Valenti said. “It is inexplicable, until you understand that this has nothing to do with families or babies, but enforcing a worldview that says it’s women’s job to be pregnant and to stay pregnant, no matter what the cost or consequence.”

Despite these increasingly common realities, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) claimed Republican lawmakers are trying to dodge the consequences of their laws with “spin, or rebranding, or by sticking their heads in the sand.” But “this isn’t a PR problem for women,” she said, “it is a living hell, and a personal nightmare.”