LA Law is Clear: Physicians Can Provide Miscarriage Management Care
Response to The Alabama Reflector 

The Alabama Reflector published an article yesterday sharing the experience of Tabitha Crowe at St. Tammany Health System in Covington, Louisiana. The article reported that Crowe received miscarriage management care through the administration of misoprostol from the hospital’s practitioners. Crowe stated, however, that when she requested a D&C they refused to respond. The article raises the question as to whether Louisiana’s abortion laws caused the hospital to refrain from providing the D&C.

While we are not knowledgeable of the specifics of the situation outside of the article, the Communications Director for Louisiana Right to Life, Sarah Zagorski, said the following in response: 

“We are always saddened to hear when a woman experiences the tragedy of miscarriage and the loss of her unborn baby. Many of us have experienced this type of devastating loss personally or through our loved ones.  In these tragic situations, it is important to remember that Louisiana’s pro-life laws are abundantly clear that physicians can provide miscarriage management without delay, whether through the use of medication, such as misoprostol, or surgical intervention, such as a D&C. Louisiana law states that miscarriage treatment is not an elective abortion.     

La. R.S. §  14.87.1(1)(b) says, “Abortion shall not mean any one or more of the following acts, if performed by a physician: 

“(ii)The removal of a dead unborn child or the inducement or delivery of the uterine contents in case of a positive diagnosis, certified in writing in the woman’s medical record along with the results of an obstetric ultrasound test, that the pregnancy has ended or is in the unavoidable and untreatable process of ending due to spontaneous miscarriage, also known in medical terminology as spontaneous abortion, missed abortion, inevitable abortion, incomplete abortion, or septic abortion.”