Physicians must treat in line with patients' wishes and standards of care. Some medical ethicists say that abortion bans will force doctors to disregard these obligations in order to follow the law.
– currently on hold – which makes abortion a felony except when it"shall have been necessary to preserve the life of such woman." A variation of that language is included in most abortion restrictions in other states.
If not, the laws put both the physician and patient in the position of just standing there to"watch somebody get sicker and sicker and sicker until some point – and where is that point? – where it's OK to intervene and we won't be exposed to criminal liability," says King, who is vice chair of ACOG's Committee on Ethics.Cancer diagnoses raise questions as well, Harris says.
Even for providers in states where abortion is reliably legal, like King in Massachusetts, there are legal and ethical questions."Let's say that I'm providing abortion care to persons that I know that are traveling to me from out of state – does that mean then that I can't travel, for example, to Texas?" she asks.