Government Intrudes into the Practice of Medicine
The U.S. Supreme Court's abortion ruling may prompt doctors to refuse surgery even for women whose lives are endangered by pregnancy, said Michael Greene, a physician writing in the New England Journal of Medicine. Physicians denounced the court's decision last week to uphold the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
- Health-care providers and patients “should be alarmed by the current degree of intrusion by our government into the practice of medicine” said Michael Greene
- The law makes it a crime for doctors to perform “partial birth” abortions, allowing the first nationwide ban on the procedure
- The justices voted 5-4 that the legislation is constitutional even though it doesn't make an exception for pregnancies that pose a risk to the mother's health
- The decision may revive local and nationwide efforts to restrict access to abortion services, wrote R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison
- “Government regulation has no place in this process,” wrote Jeffrey M. Drazen, the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine
- Under the law, doctors may be put in prison for two years and fined up to $250,000 for partially delivering a living fetus and subsequently killing it “deliberately and intentionally”