Alabama lawmaker drops bid to repeal law named for his dead patient

By Jonathan Kaminsky (Reuters) - An Alabama doctor-turned-lawmaker said on Tuesday he was abandoning his push to overturn a law requiring insurers to pay for post-pregnancy hospital stays that was inspired by and named after a former patient of his who died days after giving birth. "Rose's Law," named after Rose Church, a 36-year-old nurse who died of a heart attack 10 days after the birth of her daughter in 1998, requires insurers in Alabama to cover post-pregnancy hospital stays up to 48 hours. Enacted in 1999, it was championed by her widower, Gene Church, who said she was discharged too quickly and without proper tests. State Senator Larry Stutts, a Republican first elected in November 2014, was Church's gynecologist at the time of her death, and had been named in a lawsuit filed by her widower. Stutts said in a statement that both his decision to introduce the bill and his subsequent determination to withdraw it were unrelated to any patient case from his medical career. "My sole intention with Senate Bill 289 was to re-center healthcare decisions between a patient and her doctor by limiting government mandates," he said in the statement. "After careful consideration and feedback from my constituents, I realize this legislation isn't the best vehicle to achieve the original intent." After his wife's death, Church filed a lawsuit against Stutts, the hospital where she gave birth and a second doctor, alleging medical malpractice. It was settled on confidential terms. Church has described the effort to overturn the law as a personal vendetta on the part of Stutts, against whom he said he holds no grudge. The measure, which had six co-sponsors, would also have ended a requirement that doctors tell women when finding dense breast tissue, which is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, during a mammogram. (Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Editing by Eric Walsh)