Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-18-2025
Abstract
As the impact of the state abortion bans enacted in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health1 begins to be assessed, the most shocking finding is not that pregnant patients are being harmed, but where that harm is occurring. In pre-Roe America, people bled out in motel rooms after unsafe abortions. In post-Dobbs America, they are injured after visiting hospitals — denied care by physicians who decline to intervene for fear of prosecution.2
Laws that criminalize or other- wise prohibit the provision of abortion — what we refer to here broadly as “bans”3 — have placed a traffic light in the path of clinical best practices. Under contemporary bans, there are some clear red lights — one cannot perform an “elective” abortion — and some clear green lights, such as terminating a molar pregnancy. But much of the care provided before Dobbs now seems legally risky, and clinicians have responded to the ambiguity as drivers do when approaching a yellow light: some drive through, even as the light turns red; others stop abruptly, fearing the light will turn red before they can pass.
Abortion bans disrupt the medical standard of care, complicating treatment decisions for pregnant patients. Doctors need meaningful legal, clinical, and ethical guidance to navigate yellow- light cases. But such guidance has not been forth- coming. Meanwhile, in the absence of prosecutions or medical malpractice litigation, the threat of criminal liability is degrading the quality of care for pregnant patients in ban states and precipitating a crisis of professional ethics. To pre- vent the risky retreat from clinical best practices, there is an urgent need to clarify what those practices entail.
Automated Citation
Michelle Oberman, Lisa Soleymani Lehmann, and Yvonne Lindgren,
Supporting Clinical Best Practices after Dobbs
, 393 NEJM 2478
(2025),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/1031