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As a double-board certified OB-GYN who went to great lengths Tuesday to attend the S.C. House’s Constitutional Laws Subcommittee meeting on the proposed six-week abortion ban, I was distressed to hear comments from some representatives about how two physicians spoke in favor but none spoke against this bill. If more public comment had been allowed, we would have heard overwhelmingly that physicians support abortion access.
I attended the meeting with prepared testimony based on my training and experience. Unfortunately, there was only 33 minutes of public testimony, from eight people, before spoken testimony was cut off by the subcommittee chairman. I and many others were not given a chance to speak.
My patients and the families I serve are affected by abortion restrictions even though I do not work at an abortion clinic. I perform abortions for women with maternal life endangerment or severe fetal anomalies — those abortions that were allowed even while an earlier heartbeat ban was in effect last year. I had planned to offer my expertise as an academic obstetrician-gynecologist working in a high-risk maternity center that serves as the perinatal regional referral center for the entire Midlands. To go to the subcommittee meeting on such short notice, I had to cancel patients in my office. I know that at least three of my OB-GYN colleagues also would have liked to attend, but they were delivering babies and sent written testimony instead.
The reason my colleagues and I are so busy is because of the worsening physician shortage in our state. A third of our counties have no OB-GYN providers, and this number continues to grow. We know that states with restrictive abortion bans had more than a 10% decline in applications for OB-GYN residency. Tennessee is hemorrhaging OB-GYN providers, even from its major academic centers, because of its ban.
As of last week, our own Laurens County announced the closing of its five-bed labor and delivery unit because there simply are not enough OB-GYNs to run it. Now those patients have to travel an hour away to have their baby.
South Carolina is not a state with healthy people at baseline, with even worse health outcomes for rural communities and people of color, and this is true of our pregnant patients, too. More than half of S.C. adults have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and more than one-third are obese. Heart disease is South Carolina’s leading cause of death. South Carolina is one of the 10 worst states for maternal mortality. I worry that these abortion restrictions will cause more maternal deaths from acute conditions and decompensated chronic medical conditions on labor and delivery units. Our current unacceptable rate of maternal deaths is already so devastating to families, as well as to medical providers.
In a state with staggering health disparities, an unhealthy population and significant physician shortages, how in the world do abortion bans help us recruit physicians to come and work here to improve population health? No one wants to come work in a state where they are threatened with imprisonment for providing the medical standard of care, or have to battle operating room staff to treat a septic miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.
I became an OB-GYN so I could help people be healthy, build their families and fulfill their dreams. I hope our lawmakers will show that they, too, care about the health and well-being of the patients I serve, and so many like them throughout South Carolina, by voting against this abortion ban.
Dr. Patricia Seal is an obstetrician-gynecologist, board certified in general OB-GYN and complex family planning. She lives and works in Columbia.
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