By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida’s new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters.

Now pregnant again, Cammack recently described her experience to the Wall Street Journal, accusing the political left of “fearmongering” and creating confusion among healthcare providers that ultimately puts patients at risk. Her view — that confusion stems from abortion rights advocates, not the laws themselves — has become a rallying point for anti-abortion leaders.

Christina Francis, the head of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, blames mainstream medical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for misleading doctors about when they can provide abortions in states with bans.

“They’ve…stated that doctors couldn’t intervene in those [life-threatening] situations or they would face prosecution, and in fact, they’re still peddling that lie,” she told Vox. “They [just] put out posts on the anniversary of Dobbs saying the same thing, and they have a ‘Blame the Bans’ campaign where they’re actively lying to practicing physicians and telling them that they have to wait until their patient is actively dying.”

But doctors argue they’re scared for good reason. The laws create genuine legal risk in complex medical situations, particularly when state officials contradict the courts’ interpretations of medical exceptions. That uncertainty played out dramatically in late 2023 in the case of Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose pregnancy developed fatal fetal abnormalities; a judge ruled the law’s exception permitted her abortion, but the state’s attorney general threatened to prosecute any doctor who performed the procedure. (Cox ultimately crossed state lines to end her pregnancy.) Other high-profile cases of doctors hesitating to provide emergency care have surfaced in the media, adding significant pressure on anti-abortion lawmakers who insist there’s no legislative ambiguity to be found.

Partly in response, red state lawmakers have been moving to address — or at least signal they’re addressing — gray areas in their laws, passing “clarifications” to give doctors more concrete guidance on when they can provide emergency abortions and how criminal penalties would kick in. The Guttmacher Institute found that this is one of the top legislative trends for reproductive health care this year, with 42 bills introduced across 12 states. Three of those bills — in Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee — were signed into law, and Texas’s took effect earlier this month.

Most Americans — across parties, genders, and regions — favor allowing abortion when the........

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