The Supreme Court rendered its decision in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health in June

of this year.

Not long afterward, Dr. Louise King started hearing how it was affecting women's health

care.

We hear these reports of delays in care for topics or miscarriages in trying to reach

some particular moment in time where it's life threatening so that you can intervene,

which is not how we practice medicine.

We intervene way, way ahead of time before something gets to that point.

The Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of legal precedent guaranteeing

the constitutional right to have an abortion in the U.S.

In some states, abortion immediately became illegal or nearly illegal.

It also caused confusion about what doctors were allowed to do.

Anybody who is in one of those states is carefully trying to negotiate the laws and stay

within them as much as they possibly can, even though that compromises their delivery

of standard care.

Louise is an obstetrician gynecologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, but

she's also a lawyer.

Standard of care is a legal term and a medical one.

It usually refers to a diagnostic or treatment process that a clinician should follow for

a certain type of patient, illness, or clinical circumstance.

Sometimes though, as Louise described, a physician's ability to deliver the standard

of care is compromised by the law and the legal system.

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