Friday, Jan. 27, 2023
Have people been denied medical care over a miscarriage in Wisconsin due to the state’s abortion ban?
Several reports and doctors' accounts indicate that pregnant individuals in Wisconsin have been forced to delay or were denied medical care during a miscarriage due to the state's abortion ban.
The New York Times reported the story of a Wisconsin woman — as told by her gynecologist — who bled for days from a miscarriage after a hospital declined to perform a procedure to remove the fetus "because of the laws."
NBC News reported that after a woman's water broke at 18 weeks — to early for a fetus to survive — and she started showing signs of infection, her doctor "faced a dilemma" about whether to perform an abortion, fearing, "Will the DA go after me and I end up fined or in jail?"
Wisconsin's 1849 abortion ban permits abortions only to save the life of a pregnant person. Experts and doctors have said the antiquated language of the Wisconsin law causes confusion about when doctors can intervene and provide medical care to individuals facing miscarriage.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- New York Times They Had Miscarriages, and New Abortion Laws Obstructed Treatment
- NBC News Pregnant women in states with abortion bans face the reality of a post-Roe world
- Wisconsin State Legislature Wisconsin Legislature: 940.04
- Wisconsin Watch Wisconsin’s 173-year-old ban allows only life-saving ‘therapeutic abortions.’ No one knows what that means.
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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