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Roe v. Wade: Medical groups react to Supreme Court decision


 

The country’s top medical organizations condemned the overturning of Roe v. Wade, saying the removal of federal protections for women to access abortion services marks a “dark day.”

“It is unfathomable. It is unfair. It is wrong,” said the President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, MD.

“Today is a very dark day in health care. It is a dark day, indeed, for the tens of millions of patients who have suddenly and unfairly lost access to safe legal and evidence-based abortion care,” Dr. Hoskins said at a press conference June 24 sponsored by ACOG.

“It is dark for the thousands of clinicians who now, instead of focusing on providing health care to their patients, have to live with the threats of legal, civil, and even professional penalties,” Dr. Hoskins added.

ACOG has 62,000 members and is the leading group of doctors that provides obstetric and gynecologic care.

Dilemma for some doctors?

“I’d like to take a moment to talk about the future of the medical profession,” said ACOG Chief Executive Officer Maureen G. Phipps, MD, MPH. “[The] decision is, as Dr. Hoskins clearly said, a tragic one for our patients in states across the country, but the harm does not end there.”

Dr. Phipps described overturning Roe v. Wade as “the boldest act of legislative interference that we have seen in this country. It will allow state legislators to tell physicians what care they can and cannot provide to their patients.”

“It will leave physicians looking over our shoulders, wondering if a patient is in enough of a crisis to permit an exception to a law,” Dr. Phipps added. “This is an affront to all that drew my colleagues and me into medicine.”

Although the impact on doctor training remains to be seen, she said 44% of ob.gyn. residents are trained in states now empowered to ban abortions.

The effect of the Supreme Court decision on miscarriage management is another unknown.

“It’s going to be very difficult for us, the clinicians, to manage miscarriage,” Dr. Hoskins said. “Many miscarriages could be what we call ‘incomplete’ in the beginning,” where there is still a heartbeat and the patient is cramping and/or bleeding.

In that instance, Dr. Hoskins said, clinicians may be thinking that they have to wait.

“They may be needing to get additional opinions, whether it’s a legal opinion ... or another medical opinion.”

“It’s going to have a devastating effect on every aspect of a woman’s health care, including if she is spontaneously miscarrying,” Dr. Hoskins predicted.

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