How the Dobbs Decision Can Affect Cancer Patients

September 6, 2023

(Med Page Today) – Lisa Harris, MD, PhD, began to look at her cancer patients differently after the Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked in May 2022. One patient, who was 14 weeks’ pregnant, was hospitalized with aggressive, widely metastatic cancer and was in need of palliative chemotherapy. The patient was so thin and frail that it was hard to fathom how she had sustained the pregnancy for so long, said Harris, an ob/gyn at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The patient requested an abortion, and during the procedure Harris remembered thinking, “what would have happened … to our patient if she had come to us and abortion was illegal in the state? Would her abortion count as lifesaving when there was no saving her life?” (Read More)