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A small group of ob.gyns. and women’s health clinics in Arizona is challenging a new state law that requires doctors to tell their patients that a medication abortion can be reversed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on June 4, calls on the court to stop the controversial law from taking effect on July 3.
The plaintiffs – Dr. Eric Reuss, Dr. Paul A. Isaacson, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, Planned Parenthood of Arizona Inc., and Desert Star Family Planning, LLC – claim that the law (S.B. 1318) violates their First Amendment rights by requiring them to communicate a “state-mandated message that is not medically or scientifically supported and that is antithetical to the purpose of informed consent.”
They also charge that the Arizona law violates patients’ 14th Amendment rights because it requires that women seeking an abortion receive “false, misleading, and/or irrelevant information.”
Recently, a coalition of groups that included the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cited the Arizona law as an example of how politicians are interfering in the practice of medicine.
“It is stunning to me that politicians think they are qualified to decide what treatments actual, qualified medical professionals should endorse when counseling their patients,” Dr. Ilana Addis, an ob.gyn. in Tucson and chair of the Arizona section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We must realize that the groups behind this measure are the same people whose real agenda is to ban safe, legal abortion outright.”
Under S.B. 1318, physicians must inform every woman seeking an abortion that it may be possible to reverse the effects of a medication abortion if the woman changes her mind and that more information on that process is available on the department of health services’ website.
According to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, the reversal process involves injecting large doses of progesterone in patients who have taken mifepristone but haven’t taken the second drug in the abortion regimen (misoprostol).
This process is unproven and the support for it is based only on a series of case reports, not actual scientific studies, Dr. Addis said. Case reports are not used to make changes in actual medical practice, she added.
But antiabortion groups like the Center for Arizona Policy support the law.
“Women deserve to have all the facts before making the decision to have an abortion,” the group wrote in a fact sheet about the law. “Women who have initiated a chemical abortion process and who change their minds, for whatever reason, should not have their baby stolen from them because Planned Parenthood, or any abortionist, withheld potentially life-saving facts.”
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @maryellenny
A small group of ob.gyns. and women’s health clinics in Arizona is challenging a new state law that requires doctors to tell their patients that a medication abortion can be reversed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on June 4, calls on the court to stop the controversial law from taking effect on July 3.
The plaintiffs – Dr. Eric Reuss, Dr. Paul A. Isaacson, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, Planned Parenthood of Arizona Inc., and Desert Star Family Planning, LLC – claim that the law (S.B. 1318) violates their First Amendment rights by requiring them to communicate a “state-mandated message that is not medically or scientifically supported and that is antithetical to the purpose of informed consent.”
They also charge that the Arizona law violates patients’ 14th Amendment rights because it requires that women seeking an abortion receive “false, misleading, and/or irrelevant information.”
Recently, a coalition of groups that included the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cited the Arizona law as an example of how politicians are interfering in the practice of medicine.
“It is stunning to me that politicians think they are qualified to decide what treatments actual, qualified medical professionals should endorse when counseling their patients,” Dr. Ilana Addis, an ob.gyn. in Tucson and chair of the Arizona section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We must realize that the groups behind this measure are the same people whose real agenda is to ban safe, legal abortion outright.”
Under S.B. 1318, physicians must inform every woman seeking an abortion that it may be possible to reverse the effects of a medication abortion if the woman changes her mind and that more information on that process is available on the department of health services’ website.
According to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, the reversal process involves injecting large doses of progesterone in patients who have taken mifepristone but haven’t taken the second drug in the abortion regimen (misoprostol).
This process is unproven and the support for it is based only on a series of case reports, not actual scientific studies, Dr. Addis said. Case reports are not used to make changes in actual medical practice, she added.
But antiabortion groups like the Center for Arizona Policy support the law.
“Women deserve to have all the facts before making the decision to have an abortion,” the group wrote in a fact sheet about the law. “Women who have initiated a chemical abortion process and who change their minds, for whatever reason, should not have their baby stolen from them because Planned Parenthood, or any abortionist, withheld potentially life-saving facts.”
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @maryellenny
A small group of ob.gyns. and women’s health clinics in Arizona is challenging a new state law that requires doctors to tell their patients that a medication abortion can be reversed.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on June 4, calls on the court to stop the controversial law from taking effect on July 3.
The plaintiffs – Dr. Eric Reuss, Dr. Paul A. Isaacson, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, Planned Parenthood of Arizona Inc., and Desert Star Family Planning, LLC – claim that the law (S.B. 1318) violates their First Amendment rights by requiring them to communicate a “state-mandated message that is not medically or scientifically supported and that is antithetical to the purpose of informed consent.”
They also charge that the Arizona law violates patients’ 14th Amendment rights because it requires that women seeking an abortion receive “false, misleading, and/or irrelevant information.”
Recently, a coalition of groups that included the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cited the Arizona law as an example of how politicians are interfering in the practice of medicine.
“It is stunning to me that politicians think they are qualified to decide what treatments actual, qualified medical professionals should endorse when counseling their patients,” Dr. Ilana Addis, an ob.gyn. in Tucson and chair of the Arizona section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We must realize that the groups behind this measure are the same people whose real agenda is to ban safe, legal abortion outright.”
Under S.B. 1318, physicians must inform every woman seeking an abortion that it may be possible to reverse the effects of a medication abortion if the woman changes her mind and that more information on that process is available on the department of health services’ website.
According to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, the reversal process involves injecting large doses of progesterone in patients who have taken mifepristone but haven’t taken the second drug in the abortion regimen (misoprostol).
This process is unproven and the support for it is based only on a series of case reports, not actual scientific studies, Dr. Addis said. Case reports are not used to make changes in actual medical practice, she added.
But antiabortion groups like the Center for Arizona Policy support the law.
“Women deserve to have all the facts before making the decision to have an abortion,” the group wrote in a fact sheet about the law. “Women who have initiated a chemical abortion process and who change their minds, for whatever reason, should not have their baby stolen from them because Planned Parenthood, or any abortionist, withheld potentially life-saving facts.”
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
On Twitter @maryellenny
