Traumatizing 72-hour consent

Recorded:
Feb 2023
Speaker
Dr. Katherine Farris
Duration
0:51
AUDIO CLIP
TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Katherine Farris: I have a colleague that I work with who is pregnant and she told me when she was going in for the fetal scan, and I asked, ‘How far along will you be when you do that?’ She said, ‘Oh, I’ll be 19 week 3 days then.’ And I was like, ‘Have you thought about just doing the 72-hour consent before your fetal scan? Just in case––if it gets delayed a day or two? And you find something?’ We shouldn’t be having that conversation around a desired pregnancy. No one should have to have that conversation––and yet, that is the kinds of conversations we are having. We are harming people; these laws are harming people. She may choose to do that consent––that is a traumatizing thing––and she goes in, has a totally normal scan, never needs her abortion––that is great; but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t traumatized halfway through her pregnancy by state laws restricting abortion access.

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