Cancer coincides with roughly 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, according to KHN. Edjah Nduom, MD, a brain cancer surgeon at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, told KHN the medical emergency exception in Georgia’s new law is unclear.
“Is that a medical emergency that necessitates the abortion? I don’t know,” Dr. Nduom asked. “Then you end up in a situation where you have an overzealous prosecutor who is saying, ‘Hey, this patient had a medical abortion; why did you need to do that?'”
Charles Brown, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Austin, Texas, who retired this year, told KHN the “scenarios and related unanswered questions are almost too numerous to count.”
“What if she says, ‘Well, I don’t want to delay my treatment — give me the medicine anyway.’ And we know that medicine can harm the fetus. Am I now liable for harm to the fetus because it’s a person?” Dr. Brown asked, referring to some state laws that incorporate “fetal personhood.”
