Push To Move OB-GYN Exam Out of Texas Is Piece of AGs’ Broader Reproductive Rights Campaign

Prosecutors General of the Democratic State led by those of California, New York and Massachusetts put pressure on professional health groups to defend reproductive rights, including abortion by drugs, emergency abortions and travel between states for health care in response to a recent increase in the number of abortion.

The American Medical Association adopted an official position on June 9 by recommending that medical certification exams be displaced by states with restrictive or virtual abortion policies, after 20 attorneys general asked to protect doctors who fear legal impact because of their work. The petition has focused on the American Board of Obstetricology and Gynecology certification exams in Dallas, and the subsequent recommendation of the AMA was greeted as a victory for Democrats trying to find the ground after the fall of the fall of Roe c. Wade.

“It seems progressive, but there are so many things that are expanding and maintaining access to care,” said Arneta Rogers, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the Faculty of Law of the University of California-Berkeley. “We see AGS regrouping, the governors regroup because the defenders work in the field. It seems a little more optimistic – than people think of a coordinated strategy. ”

Since the Supreme Court eliminated constitutional law from an abortion in 2022, 16 states, including Texas, have implemented laws prohibiting abortion almost entirely, and many of them impose criminal sanctions on providers as well as options to pursue doctors. More than 25 states restrict access to healthcare care for trans people, and six of them make it a crime to provide such care for young people.

This has raised concern among some doctors who fear being charged if they go to these states, even if their country of origin offers protection to provide reproductive and affirmative health care.

Pot down the recent fines and indictment of a doctor in New York who would have provided abortion pills to a woman in Texas and a teenager in Louisiana, a coalition of doctors wrote in a letter to the American obstetrics and gynecology council that “the limits of the laws on the armor are held” and that “the laws of Texas can also affect physicists outside the state.

The campaign was launched by several Democratic general prosecutors, including Rob Bonta from California, Andrea Joy Campbell from Massachusetts, and Letitia James de New York, who each created a reproductive rights unit for their state after the state after Dobbs decision.

“Providers of thoroughness and sexist health care should not have to risk their safety or their freedom just to advance in their medical careers,” James said in a statement. “Forcing providers to go to the states that have declared war on freedom of reproduction and LGBTQ + rights are as unnecessary as it is dangerous.”

In their petition, the general prosecutors included a letter from Joseph Ottolenghi, medical director of the Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York, who was refused her request to take the test from a distance or outside Texas. To be certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doctors must take the exam in person in his test establishment in Dallas. The board of directors completed the construction of its new test installation last year.

“As a New York practitioner, I did everything that only violates the laws of any other state, but the external contours of these draconian laws have not been tested or clarified by the courts,” wrote Ottolenghi.

Rachel Rebouchdé, dean of the Faculty of Law of Temple University and Boursière in reproduction law, said that “putting the weight” of the Attorney General behind this effort helps to raise awareness and a “public account” on behalf of the suppliers. In addition, some doctors have urged medical lectures to boycott states of abortion.

Anti-abortion groups, however, see the campaign as forcing suppliers to comply with the opinions of abortion rights. Donna Harrison, an Ob-Gyn and director of research at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, described the petition as a “attack not only against pro-life states but also on health professionals affirming life”.

Harrison said that “the Ob-Gyn community is made up of doctors with values ​​as diverse as the laws on abortion of the state of our country” and that this diversity “promotes a medical environment of debate and a rigorous thought leading to progress which ultimately serves our patients”.

The new AMA policy urges specialized medical advice to organize examinations in states without restrictive laws of abortion, to offer remote tests or to provide exemptions to doctors. However, the decision to implement any modification of the administration of these exams belongs to these advice. There is no deadline for a decision to be made.

The Board of Directors of the OB-GYN did not respond to requests for comments, but after the public prosecutor’s public petition for criticizing him for refusing examination housing, the Council said that exams in person in its national Dallas center “provide the most equitable, fair, secure and standardized evaluation”.

The Board of Directors of the OB-GYN stressed that the laws of Texas apply to doctors authorized in Texas and medical care in Texas, in particular. And he noted that his exam dates are held under the Wraps, and that there was “no incident of damage to candidates or examiners to thousands of exams in person”.

Prosecutors of the Democratic State, however, warned in their petition that the “network of confused and punitive restrictions based on the state creates a legal minefield for medical providers”. Texas is among the states that have prohibited doctors from providing sex for young people, and this would have made efforts to obtain files from medical establishments and professionals from other states that could have provided this type of care for the Texans.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comments.

States such as California and New York have laws to prevent doctors from being extradited under the laws of other states and to prevent the sharing of evidence against them. But cases that require to take advantage of these laws could still mean a long legal proceedings.

“We live in a time when we saw actions of executive organizations which are not necessarily defered with what we thought that the rules had provided,” said Rebouché.

This article was produced by Kff Health Newspublishing California Healthlinean editorially independent service of California Health Care Foundation.