What is a "reasonable medical judgement" that a patient would be harmed before an abortion is permissible?

A recent Texas Supreme Court decision with implications for post-Dobbs jurisprudence on abortion seems to have been a victory for those who oppose the practice. It was widely read as upholding Texas’s very strict anti-abortion legislation. I suggest another possible reading of that decision.

Despite the medical necessity of the abortion, it was delayed and rescheduled twice that day because individual anesthesiologists, technicians, and nurses did not want to be involved in, what several called, “this kind of procedure.”

Many clinicians have followed their conscience to find ways to provide good care within the confines of abortion bans. Henry Morgentaler was a model.

On a cloudy April afternoon, in my home in western Pennsylvania, a headline catches my eye: A federal judge in Texas suspended FDA approval of mifepristone. This abortion-inducing drug has been on the market for more than 20 years. Although the decision is presented with a secular and legal façade, like other recent antiabortion court rulings and legislation, a solid religious motive is at play.

In the nearly three months since the United States Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, doctors have reported increased in...

What constitutes a medical emergency for a pregnant patient? ER clinicians in states with abortion bans need to know.

Health care and society will strive to find ways to undercut crude bans inconsistent with perceived medical need and professional duty.

The reversal of Roe may be the beginning of an onslaught on our freedoms. I want to add one more worry to the list and point to self-determination at life's end. Here we have Justice Neil Gorsuch to worry about.

The end of federal abortion rights is a disability justice issue—but not in the way you might think.

The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade has played a subtle but critical role in the history of bioethics in America. Would American bioethics discourse be changed with the end of a constitutionally protected right to abortion?

The leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s  majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade has sent shockwaves throughout the world. Over the last decade, during which we came into adulthood,...

I'd be happy to go along with a ban on elective abortion after 15 weeks if, but only if, certain conditions accompanied it.

Changes in abortion law threaten to undermine a major benefit of prenatal diagnosis, namely the ability of pregnant women to choose whether or not to continue their pregnancies upon learning of a serious fetal condition.

Several states, including Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma, declared abortion a nonessential service at some point during the pandemic, meaning that it was effectively banned until the crisis passed. Supporters of the policies maintain that abortion is an elective procedure whose medical resources are better off used in the fight against the pandemic. But abortion opponents have been taking advantage of the current circumstances to limit abortion access.

Last month, England announced that it would allow women to take the second pill required for a medical abortion–misoprostol–at home, rather than requiring them to travel to a clinic. The...

Arkansas has recently joined seven other states (Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota) in banning abortions for sex selection. Arizona’s law requires doctors to ask...

Much of the conversation about conscience in health care has focused on the ethics of physician refusal to perform procedures that they object to. However, this framework seems insufficient for...

The Ohio legislature is expected to approve a bill this fall that would make it illegal for doctors to perform an abortion if the reason the woman wants a termination...

Two days after a hidden camera video of Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services was released, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, apologized for Dr....

When she was 18, Carmen Guadalupe Vasquez Aldana was sentenced to 30 years in jail. Her crime was delivering a stillborn baby. She was suspected of having had an abortion....

Eager to join the ongoing “war on women” and seize the opportunity to roll back women’s reproductive rights, Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the Women’s Health and Safety...

For years, the abortion of fetuses likely to have disabilities has been called “selective abortion,” but, for reasons made clear in Hilde Lindemann’s thoughtful Bioethics Forumreflection on the matter, the...