Letters: Indiana's abortion exceptions hamstring doctors with threats

In 1949, my preterm infant brother died after a doctor-recommended C-section to save my mother. Today her life wouldn’t be preserved in Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma or South Dakota, where complications such as eclampsia, sepsis, hemorrhaging or cardiomyopathy likely are fatal because therapeutic abortion is prohibited. Nine states deny abortions for incest or rape-caused pregnancies: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.

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Indiana is one of 13 states with total abortion bans with limited exceptions for women in peril and/or nonviable fetuses. Those exceptions, however, must be determined by physicians hamstrung by threats of losing their licenses, receiving fines or being imprisoned if they act “too soon” to keep women from dying.

Many hospitals refuse ER care for pregnant women in restrictive states with confusing laws. Those states also cannot attract or keep obstetricians and gynecologists, impeding women’s healthcare and imperiling their lives from menstruation through post-menopause. Without access to annual Pap tests for early detection, women needlessly may develop cervical, endometrial, uterine or vaginal cancer.

Women’s lives and their rights to privacy and bodily autonomy are on the November ballot. Legislators are politicians — not medical experts — and the lack of expertise and inflexible views some have about abortion; contraception; IVF; rape and incest; timely D&C miscarriage procedures; access to prenatal care; and potential travel restrictions will ruin or end the lives of American women and irreparably harm their loved ones.

Abortion is a nuanced, multifaceted issue, not a simple “for” or “against” vote.

Kim L. Jones-Owen lives in Anderson.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Letters: Indiana's abortion exceptions hamstring doctors with threats