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Abstract
This Essay challenges the false assumption that abortion care can be segregated from women's medical care and targeted for special restrictions without any effects on women's health more broadly. As a matter of medical reality, abortion cannot be isolated from the continuum of women's healthcare. Yet policymakers and the public have failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with other aspects of women's medical care. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women's health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these impacts remain obscured. For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, and the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. Focusing the public's attention on the broader effects of abortion restrictions on women's health could help make visible the links between abortion and healthcare. Furthermore, educating the public about the full healthcare consequences of abortion restrictions could be one key means to preserving access to abortion care. Repositioning the law to recognize abortion care as an integral part of the continuum of women's medical needs is critical to protecting women's health.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction...................................................................1318
II. The Healthcare Consequences of Abortion Restrictions....................................................................1319
A. The Federal "Partial-Birth" Abortion Ban and Miscarriage Management................................1320
B. Information Control and Prenatal Care.................1322
C. "Conscience" Protection and Pregnancy-Related Care at Sectarian Hospitals....................................1325
D. Medication Abortion Restrictions and Ectopic Pregnancy...................................................1330
III. Roe v. Wade and Abortion as Medical Care..................1335
IV. Conclusion......................................................................1337
I. Introduction
Over the last several decades, as part of the movement against abortion rights, abortion has become increasingly stigmatized and isolated in women's health. The current segregation of abortion from the rest of women's medical needs brings us full circle back to questions raised by Roe v. Wade.1 Although Roe was rightly criticized as over-medicalizing the abortion decision and empowering doctors rather than women, we have now shifted to the opposite extreme of severing abortion completely from the realm of women's health.2 Thus far, the public has failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with women's health generally. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women's health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these effects remain obscured.3 For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, and the treatment of ectopic pregnancies.4
As a...