We would like to share with you one of the top 108 capstone projects of Fall 2025 at the HBS major, authored by Avantika Aggarwal, Hanna Boughanem and Saanvi Rai.
The landscape of reproductive health in the United States has long been contested and remains ever-changing. Since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, clinicians across the United States have been faced with difficult decisions that require a reconciliation of clinical obligation and legal restriction. More specifically, healthcare providers are facing heightened legal ambiguity when treating pregnancy-related issues. Situations such as ectopic pregnancies, premature rupture of membranes, or septic miscarriages demand rapid, biologically informed decisions to save a patient’s life. However, new state laws that criminalize or severely restrict abortion force clinicians to delay or deny evidence-based care until a patient’s condition worsens enough to meet vague legal thresholds. When paired with informed clinical intervention, these vague legal thresholds cause a clash between law and medical practice, often leaving clinicians to navigate tricky situations with little guidance. Examining the implications of legal ambiguity in a Post-Dobbs landscape becomes imperative in order to understand the federal and state-specific shift that has occurred since 2022, and how this is impacting clinician decisions, policymaker work, and community experiences alike.
Our project focuses specifically on investigating this issue from the perspective of healthcare providers in states that have some of the most restrictive reproductive health landscapes in the country. With a specific emphasis on Georgia, we strive to understand how clinicians at teaching institutions, such as Emory, evaluate and care for pregnancy-related emergencies amidst restrictive policies. Our work incorporates a variety of interviews to provide a holistic understanding of the stakeholders involved, from the policy makers to those in academia, medical students, impacted communities, and finally, clinicians who have worked in Obstetrics and Gynecology and witnessed changing practices over the last decade. These complexities leave us with a critical set of questions we hope to explore: How do clinicians provide timely, evidence-based care when legal ambiguity shapes decisions? How do these constraints alter the learning environment for medical students and residents? And how do these compounded pressures manifest among policymakers, health systems, and the communities most affected?
Check full project here
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