‘People need to hear from the doctors.’ Georgia OBGYNs attack state’s abortion law

Georgia’s law essentially banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is forcing women to endure high-risk pregnancies and driving OBGYN doctors out of the state, two OBGYNs and an OBGYN resident said Tuesday.

“There are a lot of political voices weighing in on this issue,” U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said at the end of a field hearing of the Human Rights Subcommittee he chairs held at Decatur City Hall. “People need to hear from the doctors who are providing care every day, what this is really doing to pregnant women in Georgia.”

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp steered the “heartbeat bill” through the GOP-controlled General Assembly in 2019, prohibiting most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy. There are exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies.

Courts blocked the law from taking effect until 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion that had been established in the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

Abortion is a key issue in this year’s presidential election, with Democrats accusing Republicans of seeking congressional passage of a nationwide abortion ban, while Republicans argue the issue should be left to the states to decide.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Georgia OBGYNs said patients experiencing high-risk pregnancies are being forced to either continue carrying fetuses that have little chance of survival yet threaten the mother’s lives or leave the state to obtain abortions.

“High-risk pregnancies are unexpected, life-threatening, emotionally traumatizing, and life-changing for all involved,” said Dr. Suchitra Chandrasakeran, an OBGYN in Atlanta. “The current abortion ban in Georgia limits our ability to provide a compassionate and full spectrum of reproductive counseling and choices to our patients and only continues to worsen the overall future health of pregnant persons in Georgia.”

Dr. Aisvarya Panakam, a first-year OBGYN resident and native Georgian, said she decided after treating pregnant patients from Georgia who had traveled to Massachusetts not to return to Georgia to practice because of the state’s abortion ban.

“I want to practice and learn in a state where I can offer patients a full section of options,” she said. “I don’t want may hands to be tied by a law, by legislators who have very little understanding of medicine. … People without knowledge are restraining out ability to provide evidence-based care. As a result, real people are affected, real people are getting sick and having unwanted pregnancies, real people are dying.”

Atlanta OBGYN Dr. Nisha Verma said terms in Georgia’s abortion law dealing with exceptions to the ban including “irreversible” and “medically futile” are vague.

“There is no way to create a law that takes every individual, every medical situation, every family into account,” she said. “The exceptions don’t solve the problem. They don’t make sense.”