OB GYNs & Medical Experts Raise Concerns on Health Impacts for Georgia Women from Georgia’s 6 Week Abortion Ban

Dr. Suchitra Chandrasekaran: "The Georgia abortion ban limits the ability of myself and my colleagues to provide evidence-based care & counseling and significantly puts the well-being and lives of our patients at unnecessary risk."

Dr. Nisha Verma: "I have absolutely seen situations where patients in the process of miscarrying are turned away or delayed from getting the care that they need in Georgia."

Dr. Nisha Verma: "I expect [Georgia's abortion ban] to worsen maternal morbidity and mortality in a state where we are already facing these terrible rates"

Decatur, Ga. - Georgia doctors and medical experts today sounded the alarm on the health impacts on Georgia women of Georgia's 6-week abortion ban, sharing heart-wrenching stories of women whose lives are at risk and unable to access care.

This morning, OB-GYN doctors testified before U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff's Human Rights Subcommittee about the dangers to Georgia women's health and human rights caused by the state's 6-week abortion ban, which they testified is worsening the state's shortage of OB-GYN doctors, already one of the worst in the nation.

Dr. Suchitra Chandrasekaran, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who provides care for high-risk pregnancies, testified that Georgia's abortion ban has hindered her ability to do her job and about how the ban will only worsen the state's maternal morbidity and mortality rate.

"The Georgia abortion ban limits the ability of myself and my colleagues to provide evidence-based care and counseling and significantly puts the well-being and lives of our patients at unnecessary risk," Dr. Chandrasekaran testified. "The high maternal morbidity and mortality rates affecting the State of Georgia are well-known. One of the largest drivers of this rate is maternal cardiac disease. Yet Georgia's ban forces women with very high-risk maternal cardiac conditions to carry their pregnancies, sometimes regardless of the dangers to a mother's health."

Dr. Nisha Verma, a Georgia OB-GYN, testified about her experience seeing doctors having to turn away patients seeking treatment from miscarriages because of the personal risks to doctors from Georgia's abortion ban.

"I struggle every day to provide necessary life-saving medical care. I've seen young pregnant moms with worsening medical conditions and couples whose deeply desired pregnancies are in the process of miscarrying be turned away or forced to leave their communities to access needed health care," Dr. Verma testified. "In Georgia, where already over 50% of counties have no OB-GYN, where we have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, and where women like my patient, 'V', struggled to access prenatal care. These worsening workforce shortages are devastating for all aspects of reproductive health care."

Dr. Aisvarya Panakam, a first-year resident who is from Georgia, testified about her decision to not return home for her OB-GYN residency because of Georgia's abortion ban and told the heart-wrenching story about treating a Georgia patient out of state whose fetus was diagnosed with severe genetic anomalies.

"As a medical student in Massachusetts, I helped care for a Georgia woman whose fetus was diagnosed with severe genetic anomalies. Even though it was well understood that her fetus would die either in utero or soon after soon after delivery, she was unable to receive an abortion because her fetus still had a heartbeat," Dr. Panakam testified. "It took her several days to arrange childcare for her young daughter and for her and her husband to come up to Massachusetts, get a hotel room, and get an appointment at the clinic that we were at. When she arrived to our clinic, her fetus had already passed and had been dead for several days. She was admitted to the ICU for a life-threatening clotting disorder called disseminated intravascular coagulation, as well as massive immune dysregulation in the form of sepsis. Georgia's abortion ban jeopardized her life by delaying her access to care. She survived. Others have not."

Later in the hearing, Dr. Verma testified about being unable to personally treat patients who were facing miscarriages, putting their lives at risk and having to wait to begin treatment.

"I've had patients like some that I shared today in my testimony that are turned away, and even though they're in the process of miscarrying, because that cardiac activity is still present, and they're told, you have to start bleeding more, you have to get sicker, you have to develop an infection," Dr. Verma testified. "Often people are miscarrying, that's a process, and we are having to wait until later in that process, until they get sicker, until they have more bleeding, until they have an infection until we can intervene, instead of working with that patient to figure out what their needs and desires are and when in the process it works for them for that treatment to happen."

Sen. Ossoff asked Dr. Chandrasekaran about what the conversations are like with patients having to explain the difficult choices during high-risk pregnancies.

"It's horrific. It's horrific. It's awful. It's almost degrading as a physician to not be able to do what you feel you need to do, and you're watching for what's protecting you in terms of a law. We will always do the best for our patients. I can say that as a physician, we will always do the best for our patients. We will always have open discussions, but to practice in a situation with an umbrella above you that is limiting those discussions and having you also carry some of that emotional trauma and burden with your patient as you both are trying to navigate this with their families is unfortunately a very horrific situation in the state, and one that I agree with Dr Verma, is potentially going to drive away good positions from our state," Dr. Chandrasekaran testified.

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