The urgent need for physician-led abortion advocacy

When the Supreme Court of the United States decided Dobbs v. Jackson, it overruled Roe v. Wade and the decades of legal protections that physi-cians and patients have relied upon in making pregnancy decisions, including but not limited to abortion care. Abortion access has been limited before Dobbs, but the new legal landscape substantially limits patient access to abortion care by greatly curtailing legal provision of these serv-ices in many states, restricting physicians' ability to provide legal abortion care through confusing, inconsistent, and burdensome legal requirements, and by upending decades of reliable standards and leaving physicians and lawyers guessing about possible future court decision. Medical societies and healthcare organizations over the last 50 years since Roe have largely been silent in the face of attacks to abortion rights. Their silence left a void in which politicians and legislators without an understanding of abortion care promoted their own ideology and political interest at the expense of patient access to abortion care, patient auton-omy, the physician-patient relationship, and physician autonomy. Physicians have an ethical duty to organize and advocate. Abortion legislation exemplifies the impact of unjust policies limiting our ability to provide patients with autonomy over their medical decision-making and interfering in the pro-vision of evidence-based care, and in some cases preventing us from upholding our oath to do no harm. We must regain control of the examina-tion room from political ideologies so that we can provide equitable, patient-centered, evidence-based, autonomous healthcare to our patients.

Automated summary

In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, resulting in a significant limitation of abortion access and the erosion of legal protections for physicians and patients in making pregnancy decisions. Medical societies and healthcare organizations have largely remained silent in the face of attacks on abortion rights, allowing politicians and legislators without understanding to promote their own interests at the expense of patient access and autonomy. Physicians have an ethical duty to advocate for equitable and evidence-based healthcare.