For doctors like McHugh and many other reproductive health providers in states where abortions are now illegal, navigating work post-Roe has been stressful.
One of the challenges they’ve faced is that the language in abortion laws has created confusion and uncertainty.
“The exceptions in Indiana include the life or serious health risk of the mother. … The concern there is that we don’t know what a serious health risk is,” McHugh said. “There’s not a list in a textbook that says, ‘These are serious health risks, and these are not serious health risks.’ We know that different people respond to disease and illness in different ways, and the long-term outcomes are not up for us to decide how risky it is and how much risk we are willing to take.
Under the new law, however, she can no longer just offer a patient the option to terminate the pregnancy, even if it is medically justified care, she said. Instead, she has to run it by the hospital’s lawyers to determine whether she can legally perform the procedure.a judge blocked Ohio's six-week abortion ban