On Monday, eight more women joined a massive lawsuit against the state of Texas to clarify when someone can receive emergency, potentially life-saving abortion care. All the women say ambiguities in the state’s abortion ban placed their lives at risk as they were experiencing life-threatening pregnancy complications. And Kiersten Hogan, one of the women who joined the suit this week, recounted being held for five days against her will at a religious hospital so that she wouldn’t leave to get the abortion care she needed.
Hogan’s detainment was part of an alarming phenomenon in this country: Hospitals, including non-religious hospitals, have a history of holding pregnant people experiencing complications against their will, performing unwanted procedures on them, and even colluding with law enforcement to have them detained. Hogan’s case preceded the fall of Roe v. Wade but now—as a wave of new, increasingly draconian abortion bans threaten to jail or punish doctors who provide abortion care, it seems inevitable that more cases like hers could arise.
Source: The Horrifying Phenomenon of Hospitals Detaining Pregnant People
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