Chernoby has seen her share of patients with complications like these. As many as 26 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage (a lesser proportion require emergency medical treatment). Between 1 and 2 percent of pregnancies are ectopic. In those cases, “with the restrictive state laws, some physicians wouldn’t be able to intervene until either the cardiac activity had ceased or until the pregnancy had ruptured and the pregnant person was hemorrhaging,” Chernoby says. In the Texas study, the patients had to wait an average of nine days before they developed infection, went into labor, or the fetus died—at which point doctors could act. Nine of the patients hemorrhaged. Just one fetus survived.