Doctors, patients face complex legal and ethical challenges after revocation of abortion rights

Abortion bans take away patients’ autonomy, hinder doctors’ right to practice evidence based medicine, says Lancet Viewpoint

Two years after the US Supreme Court overturned the Constitutional right to women in the United States to abort, experts writing in The Lancet and The Lancet Psychiatry have said that the consequences of that decision can be felt on every facet of the medical workforce, including physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. 

Providers now must deal with evolving legal and ethical challenges that have the potential to affect workforce safety, mental health, education, and training opportunities. In addition, restrictions on abortion care have serious economic and equity impacts on patient health and society. The papers come ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision.. 

The authors say rigorous research into the implications of restricted access to abortion care and the ongoing uncertainty related to access to contraception and in-vitro fertilization is urgently needed to inform policy and prioritize the health and dignity of patients and providers. The authors emphasize that Dobbs and its after-effects have relevance not only across all states in the USA but globally as other countries may face similar restrictions on reproductive care.

A Viewpoint published in The Lancet Psychiatry focuses on how abortion bans not only constrain patient autonomy but also restrict physicians’ ability to practice evidence-based medicine, which negatively impacts psychiatric care. The authors call for practicing psychiatrists to better understand their legal, clinical, and ethical responsibilities within the current legal landscape in the USA. Psychiatrists will likely encounter new situations in patient care, such as potentially being called upon to determine if an abortion is medically necessary based on psychiatric grounds. Providers will also need to be prepared to treat patients who may need psychiatric care because of abortion bans, a reality that the authors say the system is currently unprepared to handle.