Tenn. Doctor Details Patient's Experience Being Unable to Get Pills to Complete Her Miscarriage
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A Tennessee doctor is opening up about his patient's experience trying to obtain abortion pills to help complete her miscarriage following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Dr. Christopher Radpour, an OB/GYN in Chattanooga, Tennessee, revealed that his patient was forced to go to multiple pharmacies to obtain the pills.
"She had a miscarriage, and we discussed options," Radpour told CNN's Ana Cabrera. "One of the options is to give a medicine that helps complete the miscarriage more quickly as opposed to letting it happen spontaneously, which sometimes results in hemorrhage."
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He continued, "I found out the next day that she had gone to five pharmacists and had been refused four times. So it was frustrating to feel as though our plan was undermined."
According to Radpour, the pharmacists said they were unable to fill the prescription due to the change in the law. Tennessee banned abortion following the Supreme Court's 6-to-3 ruling to overturn Roe.
"Well, the initial conversation with the first pharmacist went something like, 'I can't prescribe that medicine for you,' and she said, 'Why not?' And he said, 'Because the laws have changed.' And she said, 'But I've had a miscarriage.' And he said, 'Well I guess you're going to have to have that miscarriage on your own,' " Radpour shared.
Radpour said the patient was left frustrated by the experience.
"I actually saw her again today, and she said, 'It was [adding] insult to injury.' You're first trying to deal with the miscarriage, and now you are having someone saying they can't give you a medicine that you need in order to take care of it," he said.
Radpour also opened up about why the law change makes doctors' jobs "a lot harder."
"Trying to take care of miscarriages, there are other medicines that we use to take care of ectopic pregnancies for example. Methotrexate is one of those that's used in arthritis. It's used for choriocarcinoma, which is basically a cancerous pregnancy-related tumor," he explained. "And those medicines are getting harder to prescribe because of the law change."
RELATED: Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade, Eliminating the Constitutional Right to Abortion
Radpour also believes that the abortion bans are putting women at risk.
"She could hemorrhage, and if she hemorrhages at home, then it could be disastrous," he told CNN. "Oftentimes, these are people who hemorrhage, show up at the emergency room, and then we're trying to play catch-up when somebody has lost that much blood."
He added, "I would much prefer that the lawmakers not interfere with our plans of care."
Radpour also shared how Tennessee's abortion law is limiting options for women.
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"Tennessee was one of the those initial 13 states who had trigger laws, and it used to be that I could sit down with the patient, who after discussing other options... For example, let's say a surprise pregnancy, we talk about adoption, etc., and they still say, 'I have do something about this. I can't continue the pregnancy.' I previously could send them to Knoxville or Nashville, but now in Tennessee I can't do that," he said.
"So for the time being, I can send them to Atlanta, but there's no telling whether Georgia will be next on the list to make the kind of laws that Tennessee made. So once I start losing those options, it makes it much more difficult for me to counsel those patients," he concluded.
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