Doctors say they’re “gagged” for sharing horrifying stories about post-roe abortion

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. calf in June, predictable yet terrifying Stories about the effects of forced pregnancy started flooding in. Some stories came out patients themselves, while many came from doctors. A doctor speaking up, for example, is the only reason the country knows about it 10-year-old rape survivor who had to leave Ohio for an abortion because of a state ban.

Well, after a report by CNN, medical employers are trying to silence their workers about the real effects of abortion bans.

Eight doctors who work at public and private medical centers in five states said their employers either asked them not to speak publicly about abortion or told them not to mention where they work in that case. The doctors told CNN that the employers had made it clear that they would prefer not to even talk about it as private individuals. An employer made a group of medical residents take down one Instagram post captioned “Abortion is Health Care” and another called a doctor into the admin’s office after they spoke at an abortion event.

An OB/GYN in the Northeast said so New York Times approached her about a story about patients arriving from banned states. That Times was interested in part because the doctor also serves on her state’s maternal corpseality Review Committee. She escalated the request to the hospital’s public relations department as usual, but the hospital said no: “We ask that you not comment to the NY Times at this time,” they replied.

The doctor told CNN, “You’re censoring me. It’s shameful and embarrassing to work for an institution that doesn’t stand up for women’s rights.” She went on to call it “disgusting”.

A doctor in another state said: “I feel tied up. I feel giddy. I feel completely reticent and outraged.”

A Texas gynecologist who specializes in high-risk pregnancies said the public university where she works told her the only way she could talk to journalists about abortion was if they didn’t mention the hospital and her work email or not using their computer. She fears retaliation even if she follows the rules. “I’m scared of losing my job. I’m the main breadwinner for my family, so losing my job would be a big, big deal,” she told CNN.

Erika Werner, MD, Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tufts Medical Center and Chair of the Health Policy and Advocacy Committee of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said CNN that doctors’ voices matter more than ever. “If [they] don’t talk about who will provide the proof of the effect [abortion bans are] Have patients?” Werner asked.

Kerri Wade, chief public affairs officer at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, has answered journalists’ inquiries about the Post.roe world, and she agreed that employers who say no are a big problem. “If people don’t hear these stories, they don’t understand the reality of what these laws are doing to real people, and I think real people are suffering. That’s what people need to understand and hear,” she said.

Large facilities tend to be risk-averse, and the treatment given by the Indiana doctor who spoke about the 10-year-old’s care probably makes them even more concerned. conservative smeared dr Caitlin Bernard, the is working at Indiana University Health, as Liarand is the Attorney General of Indiana investigate her for allegedly failing to follow state laws regarding mandatory reporting of crimes. (Bernard actually reported the crime.)

It was Planned Parenthood telling the story this week 15 year incest survivor who was forced to leave Florida for foster care. Although doctors have also spoken out in legal acts to challenge state laws, like a patient in Louisiana being coerced into doing give birth to a dead fetus and Pregnant Ohio women with cancer who had to leave the state for abortions, delaying their cancer treatments.

Some patients also choose to share their own trauma, like the Texas woman who had to bring her own foul discharge to the hospital to get an abortion after her water ruptured at 18 weeks, and the Louisiana woman whose Fetus had no skull and traveled 1,400 miles for an abortion.

Unless and until more medical systems support the desire of their staff to speak out about the harms of abortion bans, we will rely on the staff of explicitly pro-choice organizations, and the patients themselves, to get a full picture of what happened on site.