Expert encourages doctors to continue abortion counseling
Bans on reproductive procedures has had chilling effect on OB/GYNs
(Michelle Oberman, professor at Santa Clara University)
Strict antiabortion regulations have had a chilling effect on doctors who are supposed to counsel patients on abortion options.
According to a report from KFF, in states that make it a crime for a doctor to provide an abortion, 78 percent of OB-GYNS don’t make an out-of-state referral and 30 percent don’t inform their patients about online resources explaining their abortion options.
Michelle Oberman, a professor of law at Santa Clara University and author of “Her Body, Our Laws: On the Front Lines of the Abortion War From El Salvador to Oklahoma,” and co-author of “Doctors’ Duty to Provide Abortion Information,” spoke about the issue. Oberman said that doctors have known for decades how to manage worries of being sued.
“The idea of being prosecuted is new to them,” Oberman said. “And understandably, the idea of being branded a criminal would cause you to want to do whatever you could to try to avoid that happening. And the truth is that there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty around the legality of anything related to abortion.”
Oberman sought to reassure doctors and encouraged them to continue abortion counseling. She said no doctors had been prosecuted under those circumstances since June 2022, when Dobbs came into effect.
One of the issues that abortion seekers have is the widespread lack of abortion literacy, which is defined as knowledge of clinics, travel options, and financial support available to them. Poorer people and communities of color are more likely to have abortion illiteracy because they don’t have information readily available to them and there is distrust of the healthcare system because of poorer health outcomes than wealthy white people.
“The most marginalized populations are going to be most impacted by the bans,” Oberman said. “So most likely to struggle to get the information, more likely to choose unsafe methods, more likely to delay (abortions), more likely to be forced to continue the pregnancy and then to bear children that will be one with issues.”