​Chavi Eve Karkowsky

When I train medical students, I emphasize that almost nobody is more acutely aware of time than an obstetrician is. Whenever doctors in my field are briefed about a new patient, the first question we ask is: “How many weeks?” The answer affects everything. A pregnant patient diagnosed with high blood pressure at 12 weeks is usually suffering from chronic hypertension, a condition not immediately dangerous to her.

Once again, politicians and judges are limiting abortion without any understanding of what pregnancy can, and often does, ask of the human body. To conservative legislators in Texas, a new law banning abortion after about six weeks of gestation is a ploy to subvert Roe v. Wade. But to doctors like me, the measure reveals how thoughtless its designers are and how willing they are to let pregnant patients suffer and die.I’m an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk cases.