(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. conducted a successful counterterrorism operation against a “significant” al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan over the weekend, according to a senior administration official.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
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(NEW YORK) — The death toll from the devastating flooding that hit eastern Kentucky continues to rise as more rain hits the region, according to officials.
A total of 35 people have been confirmed dead, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday afternoon.
Among those killed are four siblings — ages 8, 6, 4 and 2 — who were swept away in the water, according to family members.
Beshear said Monday morning that “there are hundreds of unaccounted for people, minimum.”
More rain fell Monday as search and rescue teams continued to look for those who are unaccounted for, and a new round of heavy rain is expected early Tuesday.
A new flash flood watch has been issued for eastern Kentucky for Monday evening through Tuesday morning. Rainfall rates could reach 1 to 2 inches per hour.
Severe storms packing damaging winds are also possible in Louisville and Lexington.
The additional precipitation could cause water levels to rise again in the same area that experienced the catastrophic flooding that began with heavy rains last Wednesday.
Beshear described “widespread damage” that displaced thousands of people, including power outages for thousands of people as well as washed-out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools.
More than 600 people have been rescued by aircraft and boat since the flooding began, Beshear said.
President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration.
The destruction in Kentucky is the latest extreme flooding event to take place in the U.S. in less than a week.
Heavy downpours caused flash flooding in Las Vegas on Friday, with rising waters seen on roadways and parking garages in busy parts of Sin City.
The megadrought has caused the soil in the region to become so dry that it could not absorb the heavy rains, which helped to contribute to the flooding.
Earlier in the week, a flash flooding emergency occurred near St. Louis, which had a record-breaking 8.56 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. One person was found dead in a car on Tuesday after the water began to recede, officials said.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Kenton Gewecke and Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(NEW YORK) — The death toll from the devastating flooding that hit eastern Kentucky continues to rise as more rain hits the region, according to officials.
A total of 37 people have been confirmed dead, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday evening.
Among those killed are four siblings — ages 8, 6, 4 and 2 — who were swept away in the water, according to family members.
Beshear said Monday morning that “there are hundreds of unaccounted for people, minimum.”
“With so many more still missing. Let us pray for these families and come together to wrap our arms around our fellow Kentuckians,” Beshear said in a statement Monday evening.
More rain fell Monday as search and rescue teams continued to look for those who are unaccounted for, and a new round of heavy rain is expected early Tuesday.
A new flash flood watch has been issued for eastern Kentucky for Monday evening through Tuesday morning. Rainfall rates could reach 1 to 2 inches per hour.
Severe storms packing damaging winds are also possible in Louisville and Lexington.
The additional precipitation could cause water levels to rise again in the same area that experienced the catastrophic flooding that began with heavy rains last Wednesday.
Beshear described “widespread damage” that displaced thousands of people, including power outages for thousands of people as well as washed-out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools.
More than 600 people have been rescued by aircraft and boat since the flooding began, Beshear said.
President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration.
The destruction in Kentucky is the latest extreme flooding event to take place in the U.S. in less than a week.
Heavy downpours caused flash flooding in Las Vegas on Friday, with rising waters seen on roadways and parking garages in busy parts of Sin City.
The megadrought has caused the soil in the region to become so dry that it could not absorb the heavy rains, which helped to contribute to the flooding.
Earlier in the week, a flash flooding emergency occurred near St. Louis, which had a record-breaking 8.56 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. One person was found dead in a car on Tuesday after the water began to recede, officials said.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Kenton Gewecke and Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(PARKLAND, Fla.) — Families of the Parkland mass shooting victims are addressing the jury during the penalty phase of confessed shooter Nikolas Cruz’s trial.
The penalty phase of the trial is to determine if Cruz will be sentenced to death for gunning down 14 students and three staff members at his former South Florida school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, on Feb. 14, 2018.
Joaquin Oliver
Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin Oliver, was killed, called her slain son “the missing link of our family.”
“During the whole pregnancy we enjoyed every moment of it, including the doctors’ visits,” she said in court Monday. “Aug. 4, the best day of our family’s life, our beautiful, dear little boy, big eyes, has arrived. Joaquin.”
“We miss him more than words can say,” she said.
“I must let the listeners feel how painful it is to live with this deep hole in my heart,” she continued.
Joaquin was a planner, his mother said, planning everything from his high school graduation outfit to his college plans. He should have graduated college this year with a degree in business, Patricia Oliver said.
“I keep talking to him in my mind. I have to imagine the moments we were supposed to live and share with him,” she said.
“All the future ahead of him was taken from us. Getting his first professional job. Moving on his own. Cooking, doing laundry, everything he was supposed to learn from me,” she said.
Joaquin Oliver’s partner, Victoria Gonzalez, also gave a statement, explaining, “I was not labeled the girlfriend until the day he died … The label that we gave each other was always soulmate — that was my partner.”
Overcome with emotion, she said out loud, “I’m gonna do it,” as she began to read her statement.
“Joaquin loved to make people smile. He loved to dance down the hallways at school … He loved to sit in my passenger seat and sing his heart out,” Gonzalez said.
“He worked so hard in class — all he wanted was to graduate and make his family proud. He wanted to travel and run away with me to Paris,” she said.
On Valentine’s Day 2018 — the day Joaquin was killed — they had a movie date planned.
“I remember wondering if, amongst the chaos later that day, we would still have a quiet night together at the theater. I lost myself that day,” she said, crying. “I lost my soulmate in the flesh.”
“I lost the friend who understood me most. I lost the excitement to watch him grow up,” she said. “I lost innocence, I lost purity. I lost the love letters he was writing for me in that fourth-period creative writing class — I never actually received them. They were pinned to his shirt. I miss my best friend and the way he made me feel at home.”
Patricia Oliver wept as Gonzalez spoke.
Alaina Petty
Kelly Petty, whose youngest child, Alaina Petty, was killed at age 14, said Alaina was a “momma’s girl” who loved church and the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.
“On Feb. 14, 2018, my heart stopped beating,” Kelly Petty said.
“I am heartbroken that I won’t be able to watch her become the amazing young woman she was turning into,” she said through tears.
Alaina’s older sister by five years, Meghan Petty, described Alaina as smart, confident and someone who “shined with integrity.”
“I try my hardest, but her loss makes me feel empty and like truly loving anyone ever again is impossible,” Meghan Petty said.
“She never got a chance to even truly live. She never got her braces off. She never had her first kiss. It causes me pain to know she never went on a first date … never got to fall in love, never got to experience heartbreak and come out stronger and wiser. … She’ll never go get her driver’s license, she’ll never feel the satisfaction of getting her first paycheck. She didn’t get to pick what college she wanted to attend or feel the anticipation of waiting for that acceptance or rejection letter,” Meghan Petty said. “She’ll never be able to get married or have kids of her own — and she probably hadn’t even begun to think about those things because she was supposed to have a lifetime to figure that out.”
“No amount of strength can prepare you for hours of waiting and worrying only to see your parents come home with one of your siblings but not another one,” she continued. “The initial pain of finding out she was dead has been nothing compared to the pain of living without her. I keep waiting for her to walk through the door.”
Meghan Petty said Alaina’s death “looms” in the back of her mind at all times.
“Her absence screams at me, even when I’m focused on other things,” she said.
“I try to just shut it out,” she said, because she “cannot emotionally comprehend” that her sister is gone.
Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder. Cruz said in court last year he believes the victims’ families should be the ones to decide whether he gets the death penalty.
The jury’s decision must be unanimous for the death penalty.
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(NEW YORK) — New Zealand has fully reopened its borders for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, making it the final Western country to do so.
The reopening, which went into effect at midnight local time Sunday, means tourists from all over the world and international students will be allowed to enter the country. Cruise ships and foreign yachts will also be able to dock at ports.
Most visitors are still required to provide proof of vaccination before being allowed to enter the country but there are no quarantine requirements.
People traveling by air are also required to complete two rapid negative tests before arriving and people traveling by sea must test upon disembarking.
Those not required to show proof of vaccination include New Zealand citizens and permanent residents; Australian citizens living in New Zealand; children aged 16 and under; refugees; people arriving from Antarctica; citizens of Afghanistan being evacuated; and those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons.
During a speech at the China Business Summit in Auckland Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the reopening an “enormous moment,” saying it had been “a staged and cautious process.”
“We, alongside the rest of the world, continue to manage a very live global pandemic, while keeping our people safe,” Ardern said. “But keeping people safe extends to incomes and wellbeing too.”
She continued, “And as a value-added exporting country which depends on consumers around the world choosing our products to ensure our economic security, our key message is that we are open for business.”
New Zealand first announced plans to reopen in February, nearly two years after the borders closed in March 2020.
Fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens and other eligible travelers from Australia were allowed to enter at the end of February and fully vaccinated New Zealanders from the rest of the world in March.
Since then, restrictions have continued to ease up to the border fully reopening.
Officials celebrated the reopening, including Tourism Minister Stuart Nash and Immigration Minister Michael Wood.
“Prior to the pandemic, the international education sector was worth several billion dollars to our country and education providers,” Wood said in a statement. “While we’ve continued to support the sector with border exceptions through the pandemic, the full resumption of visa processing is great news for our universities, polytechnics and wānanga, and schools, English language schools, and private training establishments.”
Nash said the return of cruise ships, in particular, will help boost the economy because the industry brought in more than $500 million per year pre-pandemic.
“Today’s change in border settings marks the final milestone for our reconnecting strategy,” Nash said in a statement. “This is great news to the tourism industry and economy as we approach spring and summer with people from the Northern hemisphere booking their winter holidays. We’ve heard optimistic messages from tourism operators who are ready to welcome back international visitors from all over the world.”
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(SISKIYOU COUNTY, Calif.) — A fire burning out of control in a Northern California national forest and threatening a town of nearly 8,000 people has quickly become the largest wildfire in the state this year, officials said.
The McKinney Fire in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, had burned 55,493 acres and was 0% contained as of Monday morning, according to Cal Fire.
The blaze grew by nearly 3,000 acres overnight as gusty winds helped fan its spread through a drought-dry tinderbox of high grass, brush and timber, according to Cal Fire.
Two people were found dead in their car in a driveway in the town of Klamath River, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told ABC News. Firefighters said they suspected that the two were caught in the fast-moving fire as they tried to flee, according to the sheriff. More rescue teams were expected to search the area on Monday.
The fire started around 2:15 p.m. Friday in the Klamath National Forest and has caused the closure of Highway 98 in the area and the evacuation communities, including the partial evacuation of Yreka, California, officials said.
The blaze is burning through drought-dry tinderbox of high grass, brush and timber and its rapid spread has been fanned by gusty winds and numerous dry-lightning strikes, according to Cal Fire.
There was concern that lightning storms over the fire area could have sparked additional fires, officials said. But that same storm system also carried a significant amount of moisture, slowing the fire’s spread significantly over the past 24 hours, the sheriff said on Monday.
“We’re feeling pretty good” about protecting Yreka, whose western fringes were threatened by the fire, he told ABC News.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News Sunday afternoon that more than 100 structures have been destroyed, including the homes of several deputies who are continuing to work despite personally being under evacuation orders.
Many of the lost structures are along the Klamath River, with runs parallel to Highway 96, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. The Klamath River Community Hall in Klamath River was also among the structures destroyed, officials said.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said search crews rescued about 60 hikers from a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, a popular backpacking trail that runs from Canada to Mexico.
Sgt. Shawn Richards of Jackson County Search & Rescue told reporters the hikers were not in immediate danger. He said that because of the rapidly spreading fire, unpredictable winds and smoke reducing visibility to roughly 20 feet, the decision was made to rescue the hikers before conditions worsened.
Red flag fire danger warnings were issued in the area Sunday as temperatures, according to the National Weather Service, are forecast to reach 90 to 100 degrees. In addition, there is a 30% chance of thunderstorms moving in Sunday afternoon, according to the weather service.
“Strong gusty outflow winds will continue to be the drivers for the extreme fire behavior,” Cal Fire said in its latest incident report on the fire.
At least 568 firefighters are battling the blaze on the ground and from the air with helicopters and air tankers.
“Really erratic winds from the start of the incident all the way up until now,” Kelsey Lofdah, a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, told ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV of challenging firefighting conditions. “Pretty extreme fire behavior throughout the entire shift.”
The Yreka Police Department issued evacuation orders for a neighborhood in the western part of the town “due to its proximity to the fire” about 12 miles away.
“Please leave IMMEDIATELY,” the police department wrote in the evacuation order.
The police department also issued evacuation warnings to residents in all areas of the community west of Interstate 5.
The cause of the fire is under investigation and emergency management officials are assessing the damage.
Californian Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency on Saturday for Siskiyou County due to the effects of the McKinney Fire. A state of emergency frees up more state resources to be used in battling the blaze, including dispatching more firefighters and equipment to the scene.
The McKinney Fire surpassed the Oak Fire in Mariposa County near Yosemite as the largest wildfire in the state this year, according to Cal Fire. The Oak Fire, which started on July 22, was 64% contained on Sunday after burning 19,244 acres and destroying 182 structures, including more than 100 homes, officials said.
ABC News’ Jennifer Watts and Izzy Alvarez contributed to this report.
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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden “continues to feel well” and is still in isolation after experiencing a rebound case of COVID-19, according to a letter from White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor on Monday.
O’Connor wrote in a memo released by the White House that Biden tested positive on an antigen test Monday morning, a result he said “could be anticipated.” Biden had previously tested negative Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and Friday morning before again testing positive on Saturday.
“The President will continue his strict isolation measures as previously described,” O’Connor wrote.
“He will continue to conduct the business of the American people from the Executive Residence,” O’Connor added. “As I have stated previously, the President continues to be very specifically conscientious to protect any of the Executive Residence, White House, Secret Service and other staff whose duties require (albeit socially distanced) proximity to him.”
Biden had first tested positive for COVID-19 on July 21 and ultimately reemerged from isolation last Wednesday after testing negative. However, he had been treated with Paxlovid, an effective coronavirus treatment that at times produces a so-called rebound case after a patient finishes a course of it. High-risk patients still face drastically diminished risks of hospitalization after taking Paxlovid.
The letter did not specify any symptoms Biden is feeling, but the president has been asymptomatic since testing positive again Saturday, according to O’Connor’s past memos. Biden previously had a runny nose, cough, sore throat, a slight fever and body aches after testing positive the first time.
Biden had six close contacts before testing positive for COVID for a second time, though the White House has not announced any positive cases from any of those people.
The rebound case comes after Biden last week gave a speech from the Rose Garden praising vaccines and therapeutics.
“We got through COVID with no fear, I got through it with no fear, a very mild discomfort because of these essential, life-saving tools,” Biden said in the Rose Garden. “You don’t need to be president to get these tools used for your defense.”
Biden’s positive test result has interfered with his travel plans across the country in which he had planned on touting newly passed legislation to invest in production of semiconductors and computer chips. The president has also highlighted a recent agreement between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on a bill to reduce drug prices, combat climate change and close corporate tax loopholes.
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(NEW YORK) — The death toll in the devastating flooding that hit eastern Kentucky continues to rise as more rain hits the region, according to officials.
A total of 30 people, including children, have been confirmed dead, and more fatalities are expected, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced Monday morning.
Beshear described “widespread damage” that displaced thousands of people, including power outages for thousands of people as well as washed-out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools.
More rain was falling Monday as search and rescue teams continue to look for those who are unaccounted for. The additional precipitation could potentially cause water levels to rise again in the same area that experienced the catastrophic flooding that began with heavy rains on Wednesday.
More than 600 people have been rescued by aircraft and boat since the flooding began, Beshear said.
The destruction in Kentucky is the latest extreme flooding event to take place in the U.S. in less than a week.
Heavy downpours caused flash flooding in Las Vegas on Friday, with rising waters seen on roadways and parking garages in busy parts of Sin City.
The megadrought has caused the soil in the region to become so dry that it could not absorb the heavy rains, which helped to contribute to the flooding.
Earlier in the week, a flash flooding emergency occurred near St. Louis, which had a record-breaking 8.56 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. One person was found dead in a car on Tuesday after the water began to recede, officials said.
Kentucky is working to establish shelters, Beshear said, asking those who want to help to donate cleaning supplies or water. Last week, President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration.
“Let us wrap our arms around eastern Kentucky and pray for those impacted,” Beshear said.
ABC News’ Matt Foster, Kenton Gewecke and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
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(NEW YORK) — A man arrested with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle outside the Brooklyn, New York home of an outspoken Iranian writer is due in federal court Monday amid questions about his intent.
Khalid Mehdiyev was charged with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number after he was seen lurking outside the home of Masih Alinejad, who was targeted last year in a kidnapping plot allegedly organized by Iranian nationals, according to the Department of Justice.
Over two days last week, Mehdiyev was seen in a gray Subaru Forester with an Illinois license plate in front of Alinejad’s home for several hours, according to the criminal complaint. In those hours, the complaint said, Mehdiyev “behaved suspiciously” by approaching the residence, attempting to look inside the windows of the residence and attempting to open the front door.
Police later pulled him over for failing to stop at a stop sign. He was arrested for driving with a suspended license, according to the complaint.
In the rear seat of the Subaru, police found a suitcase containing a Norinco AK-47-style assault rifle loaded with a round in the chamber and a magazine attached, according to the complaint. He also had $1,100 in cash and two other license plates issued from other states besides Illinois.
Mehdiyev initially told police he was in the area of the Brooklyn home because he was looking for a place to rent and was going to knock on the woman’s door asking to rent a room. He also claimed he did not know there was an assault rifle in the suitcase, according to the complaint. He later changed his story and admitted the gun belonged to him and he was “looking for someone.” He then asked for a lawyer and stopped talking, according to the complaint.
The complaint did not identify Alinejad but she posted video of the suspect outside her house on Twitter.
“My crime is giving voice to voiceless people,” she wrote. “The US administration must be tough on terror.”
Last July, a federal court unsealed an indictment charging four Iranian nationals with conspiring to kidnap Alinejad for “mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.”
Federal prosecutors said the suspects were directed by the government of Iran to conduct surveillance on Alinejad and lure her to a third country to be captured and brought back to Iran.
“You go to my beautiful country, you will be beaten up because you’re unveiled. … I launched a campaign against compulsory hijab, and that is why, actually, I’m receiving death threats,” Alinejad told ABC News Live last year after the kidnapping plot was revealed. “Of course, it is a scary [thing] that they were going to kidnap me, but that shows that they [are] scared [of] me and millions of other Iranian women, Iranian men, who got united this time loudly sending videos to me saying ‘no’ to Islamic Republic. That’s why they sent someone here in New York to kidnap me.”
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(NEW YORK) — Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indiana, has spoken publicly about the negative repercussions she’s faced for providing abortion care to a 10-year-old girl after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to regulate abortion.
“It’s very fulfilling to serve people who need urgent medical help and to answer calls by saying, ‘Yes, of course we’ll take care of her,'” Bernard wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “But for the past few weeks, life has been hard — for me and for my family.”
She continued, “I’ve been called a liar. I’ve had my medical and ethical integrity questioned on national television by people who have never met me. I’ve been threatened. And I haven’t been able to talk and explain what I stand for.”
Women’s health doctors across the country say they feel similarly threatened.
“She is literally the same as myself and so many of my colleagues,” Dr. Sujatha Prabhakaran, an abortion care physician in Southwest Florida, told ABC News. “We all could have been in her place. We all would have taken care of that patient and then faced those attacks.”
In Florida, where Prabhakaran is based, nearly all abortions are now banned after 15 weeks, with exceptions allowed to save the mother’s life and if the fetus has a deadly abnormality. Violators can face prison time, as well as, for doctors, the loss of their medical license.
Earlier this year, Florida also instituted a mandatory 24-hour waiting period between an initial doctor’s visit and the abortion procedure.
Prabhakaran described the strain those requirements have put on physicians and patients. She said one patient, who was just past 15 weeks pregnant, had what she described as a “fetal anomaly that was definitely not compatible with the quality of life that this mother wanted for her child” and had to travel to New York state for abortion care.
“A few weeks ago, she could have had her care in Florida,” Prabhakara said. “I’m highly trained and skilled and to not be able to use those skills for somebody who is right in front of me, it tears at your core as a physician.”
Prabhakaran, a board-certified OBGYN, said as a doctor who provides reproductive health care in a state with abortion restrictions, she feels the pressure of each decision, weighing what’s best for patients with what will allow her and her colleagues to keep providing care.
“More than anything, what we’re thinking about all the time is if we make a decision that causes prosecution of one of our physicians, then it means that lots of other patients can’t access care,” she said. “So we’re really, really careful in weighing those decisions about how we ensure we’re complying with the law and then also trying to not overanalyze the law and restrict care more than it needs to be.”
In nearby Tampa, Dr. Rachel Rapkin, a board-certified OBGYN, said she feels patients in Florida are getting “substandard care” because of the new abortion restrictions.
“After seeing what’s happened to doctors like Caitlin Bernard in Indiana who are being so intensely scrutinized … doctors are really scared to provide what should be standard of care to our patients,” Rapkin told ABC News. “And patients are getting substandard care now.”
Rapkin cited as an example the care of a pregnant patient whose water had broken after 15 weeks, prior to fetal viability.
“The standard of care for that is to offer termination because they have a really high risk of getting sick, becoming septic and dying,” said Rapkin, adding that with the new 15-week abortion restriction in place, some doctors out of caution are telling patients, “They just have to go home and wait until they’re sick and then come back.”
As a women’s health doctor operating in a post-Roe world, Rapkin said she feels like her “hands are tied.”
“I went to a lot of years of school and then extra training to be able to provide abortion care to all of my patients … and all of these bans in some way or another threaten our patients’ livelihood,” she said.
In Ohio, where the 10-year-old patient whom Bernard cared for is from, Dr. Ashley Brant, a board-certified OBGYN at Cleveland Clinic, said she and her colleagues are coping with seeing the state’s abortion law impact instances of miscarriages and pre-term deliveries.
Abortion is banned in Ohio as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected, according to Brant.
“Sometimes when a miscarriage is happening the pregnant person has started to bleed heavily, has started to cramp and the cervix has started to open and the pregnancy hasn’t passed yet and there might still be a detectable fetal heartbeat,” Brant told ABC News. “In those cases, in Ohio, if we intervene, we’re being forced to call those abortions, so you can imagine how distressing it is for a patient who is miscarrying, who is losing a wanted pregnancy, to have to be told…, ‘If we’re going to intervene you need to sign this paperwork saying it’s an abortion and we’re going to report it to the state as an abortion.'”
Further in the second trimester, according to Brant, if a fetal anomaly is diagnosed that is not compatible with life, doctors in Ohio are no longer able to give their patients the option to end the pregnancy.
“It’s morally distressing to not be able to provide the full scope of evidence-based care here and to have to say to our patients, ‘I’m sorry. You’re going to have to go out of state even though I have the skills and I’m willing to provide this care, my hands are tied by the law,'” Brant said. “We just had a moral distress reflective debrief exercise for our women’s health care providers because of how distressing the ban has been for us.”
Dr. Jill Gibson, also a board-certified OBGYN and medical director of Planned Parenthood of Arizona, said this is the “hardest time” of her career as she and other doctors are forced to make decisions that she says go against their medical training.
“It’s just been the toughest part of my career thus far because doctors have been put in this really completely impossible situation of having to choose between their ethical oath and obligation to take care of their patients with all of the tools that they have and all of the training and skills that they know, and the potential consequences of being criminally prosecuted for exercising those skills and offering that care,” Gibson told ABC News.
Planned Parenthood of Arizona paused all abortions, surgical and medical, on June 24, the day of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to Gibson. She described the on-the-ground impact of Arizona’s abortion restrictions as “more far-reaching” than she imagined.
“Doctors I think are, out of fear, making patient care decisions that they would not have made one month ago,” she said, describing one instance in which she said a patient had to go through labor with a non-viable fetus so the provider would not be considered assisting the patient in an abortion.
“That patient had to endure labor for much longer than was necessary,” Gibson said. “We have doctors that are really worried that their actions will be interpreted as providing or assisting in care that could be considered abortion.”
Gibson described feeling her medical career has been “derailed,” adding of doctors like herself, “I feel that we are we are being sidelined and the people who have not had any medical training are making decisions for us.”
As of the end of July, at least 13 states have ceased nearly all abortion services.
In Texas, one of those 13 states, Dr. Stephanie Mischell, a family physician who provides abortion care, said she not only cannot provide care to her patients, but also sees them having to travel farther and father for care.
“For a lot of Texans, the place that they used to go was Oklahoma and now you can’t go to Oklahoma, so they go to Louisiana and now you can’t go to Louisiana,” Mischell told ABC News, citing two states where trigger bans took effect after the Supreme Court’s ruling. “It’s becoming increasingly hard for patients to access this care, and it’s really hard to watch patients struggle.”
Mischell said she is still figuring out what to do next herself, whether to move states to be able to provide abortion care or to continue to serve patients in Texas in other ways.
She said her work in the weeks since abortion was banned in Texas has focused on answering patients’ questions on things like where they can travel to access abortion and whether or not they still have access to contraception.
“Right now I’m really focused on the patients and trying to get them the care that they need,” she said. “We provide some other kinds of services, so sometimes people come in for other things, for pregnancy tests or for a miscarriage or something else, but a lot of our focus now is just getting accurate information out into the community.”
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