How leaving abortion laws up to the states puts women’s health at risk
Michigan doctor Rob Davidson says ‘leave it to the states’ is simply ‘their slogan, to make them seem less horrific to people in those states that have made that decision.’
From the moment the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 and overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, former President Donald Trump, his vice presidential running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and a slew of Republican lawmakers have stood firm on the idea that the regulation of abortion should be left up to the states.
Dr. Rob Davidson is an emergency physician who practices in rural western Michigan and the executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, a national advocacy group of doctors committed to expanding health care access. Davidson told the Michigan Independent that anti-abortion lawmakers talk about leaving abortion to the states because they think it’s a softer approach to simply saying what they really want — a national abortion ban.
“My fear is if they believe any government entity has jurisdiction, then there’s a very easy line to having federal authority if they get control of everything, and a Supreme Court that would absolutely uphold that based on partisan and ideological lines,” he said.
Since the Dobbs decision, 21 states have either banned or severely restricted abortion, while voters in several states have turned to ballot initiatives as a way of protecting reproductive rights.
Abortion is currently legal in Michigan throughout pregnancy, though minors must receive parental consent before undergoing the procedure.
Polling has shown that two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Dobbs decision and that voters in a majority of states want abortion to be legal in all or most cases.
On Oct. 7, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case from President Joe Biden’s administration appealing Texas’ rejection of a federal law that requires providers to perform abortions when needed for pregnant patients in emergency situations. The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act came up against Texas’ near-total abortion ban. The justices left in place a lower court ruling in Texas’ suit against the administration that charged the federal government with exceeding its authority in the area, and ultimately the issue was unresolved nationally.
“The Supreme Court’s failure to act to protect the lives and health of pregnant people is shameful,” Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “When Trump says decisions about abortion should be left to the states, he’s saying that denying people potentially life-saving, emergency care should be allowed.”
Studies have shown that the reversal of Roe has resulted in dangerous outcomes for women’s reproductive health.
Davidson said that he recently had a patient who opted to have an abortion at home using the medications mifepristone and misoprostol. The patient began bleeding and cramping, but waited several days before going to the hospital where Davidson works: “They said they waited a couple of days to come in, because I work in a very conservative part of Michigan, and they were worried that the person they saw might judge them, might have differing opinions than them, and might not treat them appropriately, simply because it’s become such a charged issue.”
A study by the Commonwealth Fund health care foundation released in July found that the Dobbs decision “significantly altered both access to reproductive health care services and how providers are able to treat pregnancy complications in the 21 states that ban or restrict abortion access.”
The report says that bans on abortion have driven providers to leave states, deepened the maternity care crisis, and put access to contraception and infertility treatments at risk.
Davidson said abortion bans can be medically devastating and can increase mortality rates for pregnant patients.
“It’s just crazy that we can accept this,” Davidson said. “It does scare the hell out of me, even in a place like Michigan, where we went through the process and we made it legal, that there are people out there, particularly running for president and vice president, who think government has any role in this.”