Would-be parents postpone pregnancies as Texas abortion ban impacts emergency care

After enduring two nonviable pregnancies, Sarah Fischer had learned how to read an ultrasound technician’s face, and she knew she was about to receive yet another devastating diagnosis. Nearly every year for the last four years, Fischer, 40, and her husband have lost a pregnancy.

In 2019, her fetus developed outside her uterus. In 2020, a fetal heartbeat that had once given her hope faded, and she eventually needed a surgical procedure to remove the fetus. And at the start of this year, a simple look from her technician told her all she needed to know. The Hill Country couple desperately want a child, but the vague wording of the emergency exception in the state’s abortion ban that’s causing some doctors to delay care for miscarriages has her so worried that they’ve postponed trying again. A new study found that pregnant patients at two Dallas hospitals faced almost double the risk of serious health complications after the state’s abortion restrictions took effect and caused doctors to hold off on care until their lives were in immediate danger. “I am literally frozen in fear about it,” Fischer said. “For the foreseeable future, we are not in a place where it feels smart — or safe — to try to get pregnant.”