Restriction of Medically Indicated Abortions

In the United States, physicians are losing and have lost valuable tools to optimally provide care to individuals with reproductive health care needs due to politically based abortion restrictions. Axioms of healthcare include that medical care decisions should be made between the informed patient (or representative) and their knowledgeable physician, and that these decisions made together balance the risks and benefits. These decisions require consideration of the patient’s physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual factors, influenced and guided by sound scientific information. There is no physical or scientific evidence that the origin of an abnormal pregnancy represents divine intervention, either as retribution or as a trial. Continuing or interrupting an abnormal pregnancy should be the patient’s choice, not dictated by statute or religious beliefs not shared by the patient.

Most physicians and politicians are not experts at constructing a high-rise building. Architects’, engineers’, and experts’ recommendations, utilizing their education and experience, are the bases for building codes. Imagine if politicians arbitrarily established that all multistoried buildings must be constructed using only sand and cardboard. Use of other materials would be penalized by loss of their license, incarceration, and social ostracization for all that worked on the project. Would there be any buildings taller than 1 story? Would anyone become an architect or builder? Would the expertise to build multistory buildings be lost? This absurdity has occurred in our medical system. The questions now include why would any physician become a perinatologist? Will perinatology expertise continue to exist?

As perinatal pathologists, we must continue to optimally evaluate placentas and fetuses of these terminated pregnancies, using our education, experience, and expertise to provide a diagnosis based on the integration of fetal, placental, maternal, clinical, laboratory, imaging, and anatomic findings. By providing this, we offer tangible data confirming and supporting the prenatal assessments of our perinatal colleagues as they may come under more strict scrutiny. From my experience as editor, there are many articles published in Fetal and Pediatric Pathology documenting the accuracy, usefulness, and advances of these prenatal assessments, providing data-based support for their practices.

We must guard against emerging cynicism that data does not matter to the politicians. Accurate data does matter.

Randall Craver
Editor, Fetal and Pediatric Pathology
[email protected]

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