Lad and 93, adding to my comment above...

This is where 'place of service' and all sorts of other issues we've discussed come into play.

the odds that you'd walk into an OB office for a check-up or a relatively minor procedure that would result in a 'life of the mother' situation is technically zero. In that RARE instance where it could happen, you'd better have called 911 and documented the hell out of 'why you couldn't wait' for emergency services to be available. This is what would happen pre-Roe if a doctor wanted to perform an 'illegal' abortion... but today, documentation runs everything. If you're at a hospital for a procedure... either because of an accident or because of an 'issue', there will likely be numerous people documenting on that patient so it would be hard to hide what you're really doing, but also hard to argue with a 'life threatening' decision because as one of you noted, risk management would be involved. Doctors have some discretion, but they have to medically justify those decisions.... and they do that using diagnosis codes and documentation.... and of course, there are 'logical steps' that are the 'standard of care' for all of these issues. An abortion isn't the standard of care for many medical conditions... but for those it is like an ectopic pregnancy, the doctor is covered. In the event of the abortion being a side-effect, the rule would still involve, was 'whatever they did that caused the abortion' the standard of care for the diagnosis. If it wasn't, you have a problem... so you'd better have documents why 'that choice' was the best available to you