A woman experiencing dangerous bleeding was not admitted by doctors at an Idaho hospital until her fourth emergency room visit in one week, due to fear and confusion over the state’s abortion ban, an Idaho doctor said in testimony on Tuesday.
The “heavily bleeding” patient was told the pregnancy would not survive, but she had not been counseled on abortion, Dr. Julie Lyons, a family physician in Idaho and plaintiff in a lawsuit over the state’s abortion bans, said on the stand.
“My colleagues are so scared and confused to even mention the word, it’s like a hot potato — pass the patient around and hopefully something will happen and declare itself,” Lyons said.
“This patient had developed a massive subchorionic hemorrhage — that’s where the placenta rips off the side of the uterus — and she had developed this earlier in the week, and had been into the emergency room several times,” Lyons said
Lyons said she was on call when the 14-week pregnant patient returned to the ER, sometime in the last year.
“This patient had become increasingly anemic. She had incurred three visits to our ER, multiple lab tests,” Lyons said.