In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.
Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies is not considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients,
I have to disagree here. These laws are putting doctors in a position where they cannot help their patients at all. Is it really cowardice to leave one state where you cannot help your patients at all in order to move to another state where you can at least help some people?
Or what about those who have chosen to leave the state, but set up shop juuuuust over the border in a neighboring state so they can at least indirectly continue to provide care to their patients by being as close as possible?
I don’t blame the doctors for making the choice that they feel will serve the most people in need under these circumstances. The real cowards are the ones who voted for these draconian laws in the first place instead of standing up to their own party and saying “Hey, what the fuck are we doing?”. And the real cowards are the ones who will vote to uphold these laws or re-elect the ghouls who enacted them in the first place. But the doctors are absolutely not the cowards.