Louisiana wants to add one more medical condition to the list of ones that allow a person to have an abortion, despite the state’s strict abortion ban.
Acrania is a condition in which a fetus develops without a complete skull. In September, the state Department of Health quietly suggested an update to state abortion regulations that would put acrania in the group of “medically futile” pregnancy conditions that can justify abortion under state law. Acrania is a disorder in which a fetus develops without a complete skull.
A little over a month after Nancy Davis told reporters that she had been refused an abortion at Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge because the fetus she was carrying had been diagnosed with acrania, the change was proposed.
Davis stated that the Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge informed her that they were unable to terminate her pregnancy due to the abortion ban that was implemented in the state of Louisiana during the summer of 2017.
Adding exceptions is a laborious process
This dynamic would be altered moving forward if the state were to include acrania on the list of medically ineffective causes of pregnancy conditions. A person whose pregnancy is complicated by acrania should be able to access an abortion once the condition is added to the list, and a medical facility should be able to perform the procedure without raising any concerns. The state’s health department has decided to revise the regulations governing abortion using a method that will take at least four months – and frequently as long as six or seven months – to complete.
Officials concluded that they would rather not use an emergency procedure that would immediately include acrania on the list.
Davis stated in an interview, “I am very pleased that they are adding acrania [to the list of medically futile conditions], but it should be added as an emergency item immediately.” [citation needed] “I am very pleased that they are adding acrania [to the list of medically futile conditions].” “Women who live in underserved communities require immediate access to medical care,” and “they require this access as soon as possible.”
On August 26, 2022, in Baton Rouge, Nancy Davis, a resident of Louisiana who was denied the opportunity to have an abortion even though her unborn child had a rare and fatal condition, is seen standing on the steps of the state Capitol while holding her one-year-old daughter. Davis is accompanied by members of her family, individuals who support abortion, and her attorney, Ben Crump, who spoke to the media.
On August 26, 2022, in Baton Rouge, Nancy Davis, a resident of Louisiana who was denied the opportunity to have an abortion even though her unborn child had a rare and fatal condition, is seen standing on the steps of the state Capitol while holding her one-year-old daughter. Davis is accompanied by members of her family, individuals who support abortion, and her attorney, Ben Crump, who spoke to the media.
The health department, which is responsible for drafting and amending abortion regulations, has not provided satisfactory answers to questions regarding the rationale behind its desire to add acrania to the list of pregnancy conditions.
Courtney Phillips, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, did not answer a question from a reporter about whether or not the state’s abortion regulations would be updated when she was approached in person last month. Rep. Steve Scalia
Legal ambiguity at the state level
There is some uncertainty regarding whether or not a diagnosis of acrania could currently justify abortion in accordance with a catch-all exception included in Louisiana’s regulations governing abortions.
Following the attention that Davis’ case received from the media, State Senator Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, along with several other anti-abortion legislators, issued a written statement in which they claimed that Woman’s Hospital “grossly misinterpreted” Louisiana’s abortion policies. Jackson was a contributor to the writing of the state’s stringent abortion ban, which includes the statute that makes allowances for pregnancies that are deemed medically impossible to carry to term.
Jackson claimed that in August, health officials told her that an acrania diagnosis would be sufficient justification for an abortion. Aly Neel, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health, issued a general statement on Monday that hinted that this might be the situation, but she refrained from confirming what Jackson said. Acrania will be included in the LDH’s final rule.
Option in case of emergency
If health officials immediately added acrania to the list of conditions that are considered medically futile, the confusion over the condition’s status may be cleared up. State law allows for the adoption or amendment of regulations on an emergency basis if it can be demonstrated that the regulations “prevent an imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare.”
In August, in response to an unexpected development, an emergency rule led to the establishment of the current list, which does not include acrania.
The months of August and September alone saw the adoption of ten new state emergency rules, one of which established weight classes for London Ring Fighting. This “sport of boxing conducted without the use of boxing gloves or another padding on the participant’s hands” is referred to as “the sport of boxing conducted without the use of boxing gloves or another padding on the participant’s hands.”
In recent years, legislators have voiced concerns that state officials, in particular those working in the health department, make excessive use of the process for regulating emergencies known as an emergency regulation. The most prominent anti-abortion organizations in the state were opposed to the idea that the state should lift the ban on abortions at all, let alone make so many exceptions to it. They fought against removing the language that created the list of medically ineffective pregnancy conditions before the law’s approval in the spring of last year, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. “In my opinion, it creates winners and losers, just like an illustrative list does, and whenever you do something like that, there are always unintended consequences.”
Acrania, along with other conditions that are thought to be fatal to an infant, does not justify abortion, according to some proponents of the anti-abortion movement, because they believe that having an abortion is equivalent to ending a life too soon.
Andre Rogers has been a content and opinion writer for many popular online publications over the years. Andre is now our chief editor at Louisiana Informer. Andre specializes in current trends and technology.
