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Abortions blocked due to new rules forcing women to track down coronavirus test before elective medical treatment

‘You cannot get a Covid-19 test if you are asymptomatic and no one is turning tests around in 48 hours,’ says campaigner

Women's Correspondent

Wednesday 13 May 2020 02:44 BST

The ACLU argued the new policy could force some women into being forced to postpone their abortion until a date which is beyond the state's legal deadline for having the procedure (fstop/iStock)

Women in Arkansas are being blocked from getting abortions due to new rules forcing them to track down a test for coronavirus and get a negative result beforehand.

A federal judge has upheld the rules after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the state over the new policy and stated it infringes the constitutional right to having a pregnancy terminated.

The ACLU, which represents the only abortion clinic in the entire state, argued the coronavirus tests are very difficult to procure and abortions are timely procedures which should not be delayed by the obstacle of obtaining a test.

Holly Dickson, legal director at ACLU of Arkansas, hit out at the judge’s decision to uphold the new rules.

She said: “The urgency of the situation in Arkansas cannot be overstated. People cannot pause their pregnancies, and this politically-motivated restriction is already pushing care out of reach. This ruling will extend that harm.”

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

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1/13Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said.

Photos Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said.

Reuters

The ACLU argued the new policy could force some women into postponing their abortions until a date which is beyond the state’s legal deadline for having the procedure. The cutoff point is 21 weeks and six days after a woman’s last period.

Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said: “Make no mistake, Arkansas politicians are outright barring people who have decided to have an abortion from getting one and instead forcing them to stay pregnant and have a child against their will.

“A state should never prevent people from making a decision about a pregnancy that is best for themselves and their families. But doing so during the pandemic, when people are losing their jobs and doing everything they can just to keep their families healthy and make ends meet, is beyond cruel. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure that people can get the care they need.”

Brian Miller, the district judge, concluded the choice was “agonisingly difficult” to reach due to the new rules curbing people’s freedom but argued the need to safeguard public health during a global pandemic made the policy acceptable.

He said: “This directive applies equally to all surgical procedures and does not single out abortion providers or surgical abortions.”

Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas attorney general, said the policy which demands a negative coronavirus test result for women who require abortions was one element of wider state rules which necessitates negative test results for any individual who needs to have any form of elective procedure.

Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, fiercely criticised the policy and argued tests remain out of reach. “In Arkansas, a new law requires a negative #COVID test within 48 hours of a scheduled appointment to be able to get an abortion,” she tweeted. “Also in Arkansas, you cannot get a Covid-19 test if you are asymptomatic and no one is turning tests around in 48 hours. See what they did there? Terrible.”

Lori Williams, director of the abortion clinic, submitted an affidavit which explained she had been striving to help women track down Covid-19 tests for weeks but was struggling.

She said she had got in touch with more than 15 testing services but had not been able to find one which was able to provide tests for patients who are not showing symptoms of coronavirus and give results back in the space of 48 hours. This forced her to turn away eight abortion patients who were unable to conform to the new rules, Ms Williams said.

Arkansas, a state in the south of America, limited elective abortions during the coronavirus crisis but the restriction was relaxed at the end of April.

Politicians and abortion rights campaigners across the US have used the Covid-19 emergency to roll back abortion rights and attack women’s sexual and reproductive freedom. A slew of states have attempted to capitalise on coronavirus to introduce abortion bans.

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