By Danny Westneat – Seattle Times columnist (thanks to Bob P.)
In the fire hose of news this past week, the airlifts are an image that needs more attention.
“We are now living in two very different United States,” was how one Seattle-area health care provider summed up the dystopian situation.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that Idaho hospitals could resume providing emergency abortion care to ill pregnant women, but only temporarily, the story also emerged about how strained that care had become.
Since January, emergency services have been airlifting women, often hemorrhaging or in sepsis, out of Idaho rather than treating them there. It’s due to our new “states’ rights” health care system, where abortion is a felony here, and available and legal over there.
“In Idaho, we’ve been flying out about a patient a week to Utah or Oregon or Washington, because the fetus is nonviable or the life of the mother is at risk,” Dr. Edward McEachern, of Boise State University, said this past week.
“I am seeing patients from Idaho, but also from Texas, Arizona, Alabama and other states,” said Dr. Elizabeth Harrington, a University of Washington OB-GYN.
One justice called it a “months-long catastrophe.”