ProPublica – Doctors Now Say They Can’t Give Women Potential Lifesaving Care. “…Most medical exceptions in abortion bans only allow the procedure to “save the life of the mother.” But there is a wide spectrum of health risks patients can face during pregnancy, and even those that are potentially fatal could fall outside of the exceptions, depending on how the law is interpreted and enforced. Without clarification from legislators and prosecutors on how to handle the real-life nuances that have emerged in hospitals across America, doctors in abortion ban states say they are unable to provide care to high-risk pregnant patients that meets medical standards. Under threat of prison time and professional ruin, they are finding their personal interests pitted against their patients’ and are overriding their expert training for factors that have nothing to do with medicine, like political perceptions and laws they aren’t qualified to interpret. As a result, some patients are forced to endure significant risks or must travel out of state if they want to end a pregnancy. Sometimes, their doctors aren’t even giving them adequate information about the dangers they face. Osmundson and 30 other doctors across nine states in which abortion is banned or restricted described to ProPublica the impossible landscape they must navigate in the nearly two years since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. It is one in which fetuses — some with no chance of survival — are being prioritized over their at-risk mothers and oncologists are hesitating to give chemotherapy to cancer patients for fear of legal consequences if it disrupts the pregnancies. Doctors described the position they’ve been put in — denying abortions to high-risk patients who are begging for them — as “distressing,” “untenable” and “insane.” Speaking out about the broken system felt like the only way to not be complicit, Osmundson said. “It’s going to take physicians coming together and saying: ‘We’re not going to participate in this. We’re going to do what we think is right for patients.’”