Dobbs Has Triggered Widespread Discrimination in Non-Reproductive Healthcare (trigger warning)

(and the MISOGYNIST, PATRIARCHAL, THEOCRATIC, CHRISTOFASCIST WAR ON WOMEN continues apace)


Dobbs Has Triggered Widespread Discrimination in Non-Reproductive Healthcare (trigger warning)
PUBLISHED 11/18/2025 by Shoshanna Ehrlich


Physicians across specialties, from oncology to dermatology, report that abortion bans are undermining patient care.



Abortion-rights activists in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2024, the second anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which reversed federal protections for access to abortions. (Aashish Kiphayet / Middle East Images via AFP and Getty Images)

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued a press release pinpointing with prescient accuracy that it would “trigger nothing short of a public health crisis, exacerbate existing health disparities, and further endanger already marginalized populations most.” The U.S. was now in “clear violation of international law and globally recognized health and human rights standards.” In the years following Roe‘s overturn, PHR has issued state-specific research briefs on the harms of abortion bans. It has also worked to “empower clinicians and advocates to speak out against the human rights violations occurring under these draconian laws.”

On Sept. 30, PHR issued a groundbreaking research brief, “Cascading Harms: How Abortion Bans Lead to Discriminatory Care Across Medical Specialties.” Based on in-depth interviews with 33 physicians from varying health specialties across the country, the study found that abortion bans “have hindered the ability of providers in diverse medical fields to follow evidence-based practices and standards of care, creating a pervasive chilling effect that results in substandard care and discriminatory treatment for reproductive-age women and pregnant patients.” Ms. recently had the opportunity to sit down with PHR medical director Michele Heisler, MD, MPA, and director of research, legal and advocacy Payal Shah, JD, to discuss how abortion bans create hindrances in healthcare beyond the reproductive space.

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A doctor’s office in Manhattan, New York. (Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

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She said abortion bans are resulting in “two types of discriminatory treatment.”

First: “discrimination against all reproductive-age people with pregnancy potential, most women, compared to men. The men are getting the treatment, but the reproductive-age women are not.”

Second, as typified by the contraceptive reliability assessment, is that “within reproductive-age women, even if it’s unconscious, marginalized groups [are] less likely to get necessary, effective treatment.”

… Reproductive age women are being sorted into deserving and non-deserving groupings based upon an often-subjective assessment of their contraceptive reliability, and prescribed medications accordingly.

The possibility that “abortion bans are leading to discriminatory care for marginalized groups beyond reproductive healthcare” had, as Shah noted, “come up in several earlier reports we had done, and was prompting us to start delving into it … to understand what is the scope of this? Who is impacted? Who can avoid this harm, but also, who can’t?”

For Shah, the conclusion of this study—“that abortion bans are leading to discriminatory care for marginalized groups”—was “one of the most chilling findings.”
. . .

Some specialists get to the point where they feel, “I just can’t do that. I need to feel that I have the flexibility to use my clinical skills and to engage in shared decision making with my patients and not wait until I can document that there is serious harm or death,” said Heisler. They are “perceiving these as environments that are hostile to science. They’re hostile to medicine, and they’re hostile to clinicians’ ability to provide the highest standard of evidence-based ethical care.” Both Heisler and Shah stressed, this stressful environment has produces yet another cascading harm of abortion bans—namely, “the exodus of other specialties, besides OB-GYNs from states … which already have healthcare [and] maternity care deserts.” Ultimately, this leaves us with the chilling reality that medical care deserts are continuing to grow, contributing to communities’ suffering.


https://msmagazine.com/2025/11/18/abortion-bans-impact-oncology-dermatology-healthcare/