Florida’s two state health agencies clarified for doctors on Thursday morning that an abortion is allowed at “any stage in pregnancy” to save the life and health of the mother, according to a press release.
“Providers are reminded that Florida requires life-saving medical care to a mother without delay when necessary, and the Florida Department of Health and the Agency for Health Care Administration will take regulatory action when a provider fails to follow this standard of care,” the press release says in bold text.
The release, aimed to dispel what the state called “misinformation” about abortion in Florida, also says “miscarriage is not an abortion” in bold text and warns health care facilities and providers that a failure to provide life-saving treatment for pregnant women may constitute malpractice.
Florida is going to prosecute their own healthcare workers, regardless of what the law actually says or means. What is “to save the life of the mother”, to avoid any injury or only when the mother-to-be is days, hours, minutes from dying? The whole point is to confuse and scare doctors into not providing the necessary care that women need.
Someome really needs to abort an ectopic pregnancy very early on and fight it all the way to the supreme court.
Everyone says it’s okay with releases like this, yet everyone is threatened about being charged for doing it due to vagueness and not being a risk until it’s almost too late.
Hey, we vote on it this year. Here’s hoping!
Unfortunately, as we have seen in other states (and possibly also Florida), hospitals are willing to let women die rather than take the legal risk even when the law says that the life or health of the mother is at risk. And now all they’re doing here is putting those facilities between a rock and a hard place. Either they perform the abortion and risk breaking the law or they don’t perform the abortion and risk malpractice. I’m guessing they’ll probably err on the side of malpractice.
That’s what insurance is for. - the executive at the hospital
If the mother lives, she wasn’t truely in danger, doctors go straight to prison. If the mother dies, she was in danger and they failed to act, doctors go straight to prison.
Should work swimmingly.
Who decides that the woman’s life is at-risk enough to qualify as necessary? A panel of priests? The election police? A healthcare provider? The person whose life is on the line?
This seems to be the state health agencies clarifying the current rules. Not ideal, but hopefully only temporary until this law becomes unconstitutional.
I wager that DeSantis ordered this to make republicans looks better in the face of all the horror stories about women being left, mid miscarriage, with fetuses rotting inside of them, until they are on deaths door where the law would finally let it be removed without the doctors being arrested.
Such bullsh*t.
“Dear Doctors… You should perform abortions when it’s medically necessary… oh and if we don’t agree it was medically necessary (yet) you lose your license and possibly face criminal charges. - Sincerely Florida”
Don’t worry, Governor DeathSantis is on the case
Someone asked me once if I had the option to save one life or the other, which would I choose? It wasn’t about abortion, but more like diverting the train. I said, “The moment I decide who to save is also the moment I decide who dies. There will either be an action or inaction, but that decision is what makes me a murderer. People may tell me it’s not true because I only did it to save a life, but one life was already about to be lost, and I didn’t change the outcome. If someone walks into traffic and you decide to risk your life and push them to safety, you are putting yourself at risk where there was no risk before and therefore potentially trading your life for another. You could both die, but you could both live, and that’s the difference. If someone is trying to kill you, but you kill them, you prevented a decided action to kill, and therefore, it wasn’'t your decision.”
The decision should be made between the mother and the doctor.