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Sometimes I find it's hard to keep on. I read the news, see, the isn't a, isn't it a shame, but it's not
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Music by Champagne Charlie and the Wah Wahs. Find them on Spotify. The song title is Sometimes I find, Hey everybody, it's Shout Your Cause. Again, my name is Sally Hendrick and I've got Dr. Laura Andresen here today with me who is an OB GYN practicing in Franklin, Tennessee area. And she ran for House District 63 this past term and did not win her election. But I wanted to point out what she was trying to do because she is raising awareness about reproductive rights and is still talking about these things. Obviously passionate about it since she ran. Welcome.
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Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Despite the loss in November, I'm still very, very interested in continuing advocacy work for reproductive rights and healthcare in Tennessee. So by being your guest today, that allows me to continue to elevate my platform and hopefully, eventually protect the women and families of Tennessee.
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Speaking of that, do you plan on running again next time? Is that already in your decision making or are you still on the fence or what's going on with that?
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I do plan to run. Again, I felt that I was able to gather a lot of support throughout the process, not enough to win, but there is a lot of data that points to the fact that sometimes people need to run two to three times to get that name recognition and get their message out there and be able to flip a seed.
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Speaking of name recognition, it helps to know something about somebody. So I did a little snooping on Dr. Andreessen. First of all, her last name is Andreessen. It's often mistaken for Anderson because only the R and the E are switched in the spelling. So take note, next off, Dr. Andreessen is from North Dakota, a long way from Franklin, Tennessee where she practices obstetrics and gynecology. She's a runner in her free time probably to burn off the calories from those cookies and cakes. She likes to bake with her
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Boys. I'm in this for the long game and we'll definitely,
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And it takes that. It takes the consistency, the perseverance. You can't just think of it always as winning the game. You've got to just continue to play the game.
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I agree 100%. It just was hard to see that Tennessee didn't flip any seats across the state. That was one of the harder things to accept and acknowledge, but I think a lot of the people that ran are invested and will plan to run again. So I'm excited about the future.
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What are the issues that you're seeing as the top of the list when it comes to reproductive care right now?
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Well, reproductive care in Tennessee changed drastically. In 2022, Roe fell in June and on August 25th, 2022, the state's trigger ban went into effect, which was voted into place in 2019. The law essentially created an environment where we were afraid to treat any type of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, any real issue in pregnancy because of the fear of criminalization that would include a Class C felony, time in prison, loss of medical license, and basically the end of your career. So it was a very difficult time for patients and for providers. As we've navigated through that. There were some exceptions brought to the law during the session in 2023, we were able to treat ectopics, able to treat miscarriage, but there still were not exceptions for true medical emergencies in the second trimester, like bleeding or rupture of membranes. There's not an exception for rape or incest. There's not an exception for fatal fetal anomalies, which means a baby that cannot survive outside the uterus.
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So there's still a lot of people behind the scenes working to try to get exceptions and create a space where we can take care of our patients in this state and not see some of the things we've seen in states surrounding us with the maternal deaths that have occurred due to delays in care, the current environment because of the steps that have been taken, and a recent injunction that was passed regarding the lawsuit that I'm involved in against the state with the Center for Reproductive Rights has allowed some additional exceptions for premature rupture membranes, hemorrhage in the second trimester before viability and in some cases fetal conditions that could affect the health of the mother. So that was a win and that was a three panel trial or not trial hearing with women judges from across the state. So one judge from east Tennessee, one from West Tennessee and one from Middle Tennessee.
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And they did come back stating that the law was vague enough that it was affecting the constitutional right to healthcare for women and that was a win. So Menti did not do anything to stop that injunction, at least he has not at this point. He states that we can provide that type of care in Tennessee without fear of persecution. That is a verbal, that's not a written law. So that still is a little bit of fear in the community that cares for these women, but any little step in the right direction is a step forward. So that has been encouraging. There's also some bigger institutions in the state that now have policies and procedures. If you come in at 16 weeks with your water broken or your hemorrhaging, they can automatically treat you. They don't need to wait for you to become critically ill to begin care. And so those little advantages, those little pieces of progress make it a safer place to be pregnant in Tennessee, it's not perfect. We're still having to send patients out of the state on a routine basis for obstetric care that we are trained to provide here. And that is devastating for so many families.
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But there are people, boots on the ground, still working on bills to bring to the legislative session this year to hopefully bring some more exceptions to us.
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Yeah, I hope that goes into play because I remember when my mother had a miscarriage when I was a very young child and they would not give her a DNC at the time. And it took quite a while before she got it. And I remember her being in so much pain and finally being able to go. And I just think about that and think, how are we back to that or before that even.
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Yeah, it's hard to imagine that our children, our grandchildren, will have fewer rights than we did. I spent a majority of my career and my life. I was born in 1972, so I always had Roe and always had a fear that it was going to fall. And some of my willingness to step up now is secondary to regret that I didn't step up earlier to try to protect Roe better than I did,
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But who really knew all of the legal ramifications of what was going on along the way, even though I was seeing it as it was happening, they were talking about it, how it was going to play out, and it was just hard to watch, but you just had to watch it unfold right in front of you and you knew exactly what was happening. And one of the things when I met you, it was at the film screening. What was the name of the film?
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It's called the A Word, and it was done by the independent out of the uk.
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Yeah, the A word. And one of the things that struck me when you were talking was that you had retained an attorney for your practice so that you could have them on hand whenever you needed their advice.
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I did. I was very fearful. I had been through prior experiences that taught me that you can't just depend on somebody telling you, oh, it's going to be okay or just documented the best of your ability. And so I felt very isolated. So I decided to retain an attorney to help me with documentation and charting and guide me through any medical emergencies that came in. And I don't regret doing it. It was an independent decision and it gave me the ability to walk in those hospital doors every day and feel like I had something that was on my side because a lot of things were not, there was not a great deal of push to enact some policies and procedures from the hospital standpoint. The legal team kind of said, oh, the standard, it's probably not going to happen. I don't think you really need to worry about it. And ACOG did not offer a lot of resources because we were not providing the true standard of care for medical care and pregnancy because we weren't able to provide abortions. So they were kind of standing back. Tennessee Medical Association didn't want to even say the word out loud because the word abortion out loud because that offended so many of their conservative members. But we've,
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Why is abortion such a dirty word?
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It is so interesting that it has been so weaponized over the years, and it came from the political standpoint because we've always used the word abortion in medical literature. And throughout my career, I've had people come to me and they'll say, spontaneous abortion on their chart, and that's a miscarriage. And they are up in arms that is on their chart and they want it off of their chart. And then trying to explain, this was well before Roe fell trying to explain. It's just that's medical terminology. It's not an accusation or a judgment, but that's what the politics of it has provided. It's that it's a judgment. It's a place to view people as good or bad or evil or not doing the right thing, not being responsible. And I would love to change that. I kind of fall on the sword of, I want to make this a word we can say in everyday sentences with our friends and our families rather than there's another group of people that are like, we need to talk around it. You need to find different words. So it's not so polarizing, but it's the same issue. So I don't know that that's going to work. I think we need to keep educating that it is medical care.
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Well, and speaking of educating us, why don't you give me a little bit of an education on House Bill 26, which is what Judo threatens access to mail, order, abortion pills, et cetera. Explain that house bill to me and what's going on with Mr. Olso.
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Yes. He has brought this bill forward to create fear and legal repercussions for anyone that obtains dispenses abortion pills. So that includes miry, stone and misoprostol. Currently, you can get abortion pills in Tennessee through states that are called SHIELD states. So areas like Connecticut, New York, they can mail abortion pills into this state with the knowledge that their state will protect them. They know that they will never set a foot in Tennessee because they could be arrested. So in other states like us, Texas, so you may have seen in the news last week, Paxton is trying to sue a doctor in New York for this very reason. It violates some of the laws that are on the books, the Comstock laws that allow us to mail privately. But there's a lot of things in this bill also, there's a $5 million fine if you are caught doing this.
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That goes above and beyond our current laws that put a limit on how much money can be put into a lawsuit to file against someone. They're called tort reform laws. There's also a timeframe on it that is five years instead of the one year time of liability that is currently in place. So there's a lot of little angles to this bill that could be detrimental. Also, the fact that when they say anyone that distributes, so that could include the manufacturers. So if you're a manufacturer, why in the world would you send this medication to our state when you have no way of verifying how it's being used. And we use this medication specifically, or Cytotech is the brand name. We use that from a multitude of issues. We use it on cervixes that maybe have never delivered a baby postmenopausal women, and we use it in postpartum hemorrhage almost every single day. And to lose that drug would be detrimental. We have other medications we can use, but that is one of our, we have a guide of what we do when someone is hemorrhaging on our labor unit. And postpartum hemorrhage kills people still in 2024. So losing that drug would not be ideal for any of us.
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Would it be possible that you would be able to testify in front of the committee or in front of the house floor or anything like that with your information about this?
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I would hope so. I mean, myself or someone like minded that understands the detriments of losing this medication, there are definitely, I spoke with a few lawyers after I read this bill initially, just to kind of try to get some peace of mind on is this really a bill with some teeth? Could it get traction down on the hill? Are there really that many people that this gung-ho on stopping abortion? And that all remains to be seen, but we are talking amongst ourselves, the OBGYNs and health providers that are advocating for women, and we will be ready to fight.
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Well, I believe it, and I know that a lot of women that have been joining in the fight for all kinds of laws on the floor, there's been that temporary injunction, which I spoke about over on TikTok. I made a video about it. And then the other thing that Afton Bain and Rachel Welty were involved in with the taking minors out of state maybe?
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Yes.
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Was that that particular lawsuit? I don't know if you are familiar with them, but I'm sure you are.
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Yes. We called it the trafficking bill.
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Yeah. Okay. The trafficking.
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And there was a small addendum to that that then allowed physicians to give medical advice in their place of practice and not be able to be charged. So if someone comes in and their baby has fatal fetal anomalies, and I tell them, well, the closest place to go is in Illinois. Here's how you can reach them. I wouldn't be able to be charged with a crime for recruiting.
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Recruiting. Yeah. Crazy. Well, is there anything in particular that you want to share that we haven't discussed today before we wrap
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Up? I just would like to reiterate that we all need to keep our feet on the ground. We need to keep educating ourselves. We need to keep reaching out. There are small ways you can get involved without being public. I'm very public, but there's lots of work that can be done behind the scenes and we need to stick together because if we don't show up, if we just stay home and curl up in a ball, a lot of us probably wanted to do on November 6th. We offer no resistance and no responsibility or accountability to the people making these laws. And they will take every bit of liberty that they can to control women's bodies. Actually, everyone's bodies, there's many other areas of healthcare they want to get involved in that really don't affect them to any great extent. But we need to just keep showing up. At the end of the day, that's what's going to matter, and we're not going to win everything as we saw. But I know now I know of a lot more people that are resources to me, people that are supportive, neighbors that are like-minded that I would've never guessed before I ran for office or before I got involved in advocacy work and that if things go really, really badly, that's going to be important to have a network.
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Isn't it nice how a new group kind of comes out of the woodwork? You just don't know where they show up from, and you're just like, oh, you were there all along.
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Yes.
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Yes. Well, thank you so much. This has been really lovely talking with you today, and I look forward to supporting you for your next run. I did do some phone banking for all of you guys down there the night before the election, so I did give my 2 cents there. I'm in Davidson County and Afton Bain as my representative, so she didn't really need a whole lot of help from me. So I've been extending my hand out to different counties, like up to Montgomery, Clarksville, and so on and so forth. Thank you. Yeah, so thank you so much for coming on, and we look forward to seeing you in the next round.
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Alright, thank you so much. I'll hopefully see people at the Capitol and we'll keep up the good fight.
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Thank you for listening today. I hope you got something out of this conversation. Please subscribe to the podcast and give a rating while there. Until next time.
