We live in an era where Republican legislation has become a social determinant of health. We’re also living in a time when we have amazing science that has lengthened our lives. Science has improved the quality of our lives, especially in health and medicine.
We’re living at a time where anti-intellectualism and anti-science have a foothold in all forms of media. This has influenced politics to the point that legislative decisions no longer favor applying science and health for progress.
Saving Lives, Or Not
On average, 3,600 women annually experience cancer while pregnant. Whether discovered before discovering they’re pregnant or after they become pregnant.
But now, 1,500 of those 3,600 women live in Republican-led states that would not allow them to end their pregnancy to receive cancer care. Also, how the legislation is written doesn’t affect your ability to receive cancer care or end a pregnancy to receive cancer care. It affects even if you’re allowed to receive cancer care.
For some medical professionals, it makes them hesitant to even engage in things like cervical biopsy because of its possible threat to a fetus. Even if that threat is minimal, the threat is enough with how this legislation is written that it could create a scenario for the medical provider where they could be charged with a felony for biopsying a woman’s cervix.
More Women Will Die
This has made medical professionals resistant to doing best practices for cancer because it threatens their livelihood and freedom. And when cancer is present, it reduces the quality of cancer care that they can provide.
Because of this, more women will die from cancer or have advanced cancer when they go to deliver because they will not be permitted to end or threaten the fetus’s health, leaving children orphaned.