![]() ![]() ACOG is very strong in their wording about supporting the right to access abortion. The American Medical Association and the America College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that abortion is health care, and I agree. No study or survey exists to truly quantify this. ![]() Is the medical profession unified on it one way or another? GAZETTE: Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in the country. They come to those beliefs honestly, but I think they have to explore them more deeply and figure out whether, even if true - do they hold up to the point where we require somebody to have a forced pregnancy to term? I would say, within my understanding of ethics, no. But it also doesn’t fully address the concerns of persons who believe life begins at conception. That, I believe, does not comport with our ethics. So we generally don’t ask one human being to give so completely of themselves to another, but we do so when it’s a pregnant person. We don’t demand kidney donations, which are less risky than childbirth nowadays. It’s not a big deal and it could save lives every day, but we don’t demand that anybody donate blood or bone marrow. For example, we don’t demand that people give blood. To contextualize what we ask of persons with uteri when we make abortion illegal, it’s helpful to compare instances where we could ask people to undergo very risky procedures to help others. But quite a number of students that I meet who believe life begins at conception still don’t believe that they have the right to impose that belief on others. Among the minority of people in this country who believe that’s the case, some are vocal and aggressive in imposing that belief on others, which may happen with this upcoming decision. I don’t believe that life begins at conception. From a reproductive justice standpoint, I want to support persons who have uteri in making decisions about when they wish to have a family, how they want that to look, whether they want to have a family at all, in expressing their sexuality, and in all kinds of different things. I want to protect that person’s bodily autonomy. If someone says to me, “I’m pregnant and do not wish to be pregnant,” for a multitude of reasons, I support that decision, because the alternative of carrying to term is risky. That might mean upholding that person’s choice not to proceed with what is still a very dangerous proposition, namely carrying a pregnancy to term and delivering. In other words, I look primarily to autonomy and beneficence in the context of doing good for the patient. KING: I frame the topic in the context of the patient in front of me. From a medical ethics standpoint, what are the important concerns to be balanced on this issue? GAZETTE: In the U.S., abortion is framed in broad ethical terms: life versus death, privacy versus government intrusion, etc. King, who is also the director of reproductive bioethics for the Center for Bioethics at the Medical School, spoke with the Gazette about ethical dimensions of abortion and how a ruling against Roe might affect providers. Louise King is an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and a Brigham and Women’s Hospital physician whose practice includes abortion services. Doctors are among those wondering what’s next. has been a highly charged topic of conversation all week. With the leak Monday of a draft decision by the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. ![]()
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