She Needed an Emergency Abortion. Doctors in Idaho Put Her on a Plane.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

She Needed an Emergency Abortion. Doctors in Idaho Put Her on a Plane.

In states that have banned abortion, hospitals have struggled to treat pregnant women facing health risks. A Supreme Court decision this week did not help.



When she began hemorrhaging, Nicole Miller was taken by plane to Utah. Only when she woke up the next morning did she understand, because a nurse told her, that she was airlifted so she could have an abortion. Natalie Behring for The New York Times

By Kate Zernike
Kate Zernike writes about abortion and politics.
Published June 28, 2024
Updated June 29, 2024, 4:56 a.m. ET

Nicole Miller had gone to the emergency room in Boise, Idaho, after waking up with heavy bleeding in her 20th week of pregnancy. By afternoon, she was still leaking amniotic fluid and hemorrhaging and, now in a panic, struggling to understand why the doctor was telling her that she needed to leave the state to be treated.

“If I need saving, you’re not going to help me?” she recalls asking. She remembers his answer vividly: “He told me he wasn’t willing to risk his 20-year career.”

Instead, that evening, hospital workers at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center put Ms. Miller on a small plane to Utah, where she said she gripped her husband’s hand — scared of flying but more terrified that she would never see her young daughters again. “I just need to stay alive so I can be around for my two other kids,” nurses reported her saying as she arrived at the hospital in Salt Lake City, 14 hours after she had arrived in the emergency room back home.

Only when she woke up the next morning did she understand, because a nurse told her, that she was airlifted so she could have an abortion.

{snip}

[Irish_Dem]

1. Pets and livestock get better medical care than American women.

We love our pets and livestock is valuable.

[rurallib]

10. spot on!

[Timeflyer]

2. It's like they want women to die, so they'll stop complaining. Give birth or die, because politicians need those

talibangelical votes.

[GiqueCee]

4. "Talibangelical"...

... I am SO stealing' that gem!

[calimary]

15. It's a good one!

A VERY good one.

“Talibangelical". Certainly makes it clear.

[UpInArms]

24. I call them the

Last edited Sat Jun 29, 2024, 03:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Talibornagain

[KS Toronado]

3. What kind of doctor would risk women dying

so there's no black marks on their resume? They should lose their license to practice medicine.

[Rhiannon12866]

5. Doctors in some states are threatened with prison

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. One who doesn't want to get confined in the state penitentiary for twenty years.

And good morning.

[Lonestarblue]

9. Doctors in red states who perform any abortion risk prosecution and the loss of their medical license.

They are second guessed by rabid religious nuts who believe that women just make up their complications so they can avoid having a child.

Such laws are the reason that some hospitals have closed their maternity wards and doctors are leaving red states.

[Tansy_Gold]

11. Then some of them need to do the right thing anyway

Take the risks. Make a "federal case" out of it. I'm getting damn sick and tired of this "my career is more important than your life" bullshit.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

14. That's easy for you to say.

You’re not the one who’s going to be facing imprisonment.

And good morning to you too.

[Tansy_Gold]

34. They're not the ones facing death

I've had two family members in that situation, and one of them went through it twice.

If doctors won't fight for their patients' lives, who will?

[KS Toronado]

32. Kinda a tRump attitude, ME always before you

None of this treat your neighbor as you would like him to treat you.

[Ilsa]

22. Drs will be second-guessed by other drs looking to defend

antiabortion laws. There is no guarantee the doctor can prove "she was close to death." The antichoice doctors will claim there were other steps that could have been done to save both mom & baby, even if the odds of that treatment are less than 50%.

Younger obgyns will probably still have college loan debt to repay ($250k maybe?), even if they are in prison and no license.

[MiHale]

13. What kind of government is it that forces you to make that choice?

It should be illegal.

[Hekate]

17. It used to be illegal in every state -- until Dobbs

[MiHale]

18. It was a tongue in cheek statement...

[Hekate]

19. TY. So depressing

[The Unmitigated Gall]

27. A "black mark" on a doctor's resume is very nearly an ironclad guarantee they'll never work again.

In the profession they sacrificed hugely to attain.
Add to that the purposeful vagueness written into the laws by right-wing legislators, so that it's nearly impossible to tell when you're on firm legal ground, or not.
And if you're not, never working again as a doctor takes a back seat to a 20+ year prison term.

[wolfie001]

6. Around 60% of yt American men are horrible humans and about 50% of yt American women are just like

Phyllis Schafly. Give or take a % point here or there. That's my amateur, boomer analysis on the yt American electorate. Still optimistic about the future though. Oddly.......

[Ilsa]

23. I would bet the number for American women is

closer to 40%, but still, an ignorant position to take.

[wolfie001]

25. My opinion isn't coming from a vacuum

The number of states where women's health is endangered is around 50% and too many yt women in those states are fine with it. As far as yt men are concerned, I didn't come up with the "I choose the Bear" movement (look it up if you don't know). You can ignore the 'white' elephant in the room, I choose not to. I'm retired Blue Democratic voter and consider the term "ignorant" a common slur. Cheers

[wolfie001]

26. 53% of white women voted for donald dump

Hmmmm, I thought it was 'only' 52%. That's AFTER all the 'Grab 'em' and Jeffrey Epstein plane-rides and multiple sex assault allegations.

[Jeebo]

29. What does "yt" mean?

I'm scratching my head over that one. There's a Jeopardy! category that comes up every once in a while about online abbreviations, and I'm afraid I always strike out on that category. I hate abbreviations. They are an obstruction to effective communication and that's why I don't use them. I can type fast enough that I don't need to.

-- Ron

[wolfie001]

30. White

Sorry, I'll bet you don't go on TT (TikTok). I've learned the language over there. I'm not mad about that statistic (53%), but I find it shocking that the majority of white women voted for Dump. I expected white men to support him by a wider margin (57%). I mean, just look at how popular Joe Rogaine and his misinformation putz-cast is.

[Jeebo]

31. What's TikTok?

I am barely aware that something called TikTok even exists. I am NOT a social media person at all. I do e-mail and online message boards like this one, and that's about it. One of these days I'm going to write a piece about Facebook and Instagram and texting and all of that stuff I see people doing with their phones all the time and post it in the DU Lounge. I think people are becoming way too dependent on all of that stuff. Everywhere you go, everybody seems to be trying to memorize what's on that tiny screen in their palm, thumbs flying all over that tiny keyboard, and it's all a mystery to me how they're able to do anything with it. My thumbs are bigger than any key on that tiny keyboard and its adjacent keys, so if I try to type something on that tiny keyboard, there's no telling which of those keys will show up on the screen. So it'll take me FOREVER just to tap in one short sentence. I have to have the FULL SIZE keyboard on my laptop computer at home. I bought some tickets by phone to a softball tournament a five or six hour drive from here and asked them to print old-fashioned paper tickets for me and leave them for me at the ticket window. They would not do it and said they only issue tickets electronically, so that you have to download something and show that pattern on your phone at the entrance to get in. I tried to do that and couldn't figure it out. I somehow managed to get them downloaded, but then there was a step where it was presenting me with a question that I didn't know how to answer and I could not get past that step. I ended up not going to those softball games at all, even though I paid for the tickets. I tell you, this stuff just mystifies me. How do other people learn how to do all this stuff? Is there a college-level course somewhere that teaches you how to do it? Oh, I'll shut up now.

-- Ron

[wolfie001]

33. It's an App you can sign up for on your computer or Smart Phone

It's free. This is the first image that came up when I opened it to show you. It builds on algorithms that send you more stuff of things you engage with: likes, comments, views. Hence, I like Red Pandas. It's pretty cool and you can build social networks of like-minded people. The only problem is the CCP lurking in the background. Hope this helps your understanding.

[Old Crank]

7. Just disgusting.

Nice to be in a country where medical care is decided by ill informed Taliban legislators.

[rurallib]

12. 2 comments: 1) Utah allows abortions? I am surprised

2) I hope youngsters are getting out of Idaho before they become a statistic

[dlk]

16. This is what misogyny looks like

And this is why American women don’t have equal protection under the law. This could never happen, otherwise.

[area51]

20. One of the things I don't usually see mentioned

is that since our govt. is unwilling to regulate/punish health insurance companies, who's going to pay for the bill to airlift her? It should be the Idaho legislators who attempted femicide by voting for this draconian law.

[paleotn]

21. Flew to UTAH for the procedure.

The irony is palpable.

[LisaM]

28. I wish Jake Tapper had started off with THIS issue.

Trump caused this, he should have had to start out on the defensive. Because this is completely indefensible, unlike worldwide inflation which was not cause by Biden at all.