February 6, 2008

 

AAPLOG RESPONSE TO THE ACOG ETHICS COMMITTEE OPINION #385,

TITLED “THE LIMITS OFCONSCIENTIOUS REFUSAL IN REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE”

 

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), one of the largest Special Interest Groups of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), strongly objects to the November 2007 release of ACOG Committee Opinion, Number 385, titled “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.” 

 

We find it unethical and unacceptable that a small committee of ACOG members would pretend to provide the moral compass for 49,000 other members on one of the most ethically controversial issues in our society and within our medical specialty—and that without ever consulting the full membership. 

 

ACOG Committee Opinion #385 is in opposition to 2500 years of accepted Hippocratic ethical medical tradition. Legal elective abortion made a unique arrival in the late 1960s in the United States as part of a legal-societal initiative, rather than as the culmination of a scientific process in biomedicine. The acceptance of elective abortion in American medical practice was contrary to the historic ethical position of Western medicine with regard to abortion. 

Therefore it is of great concern that this committee opinion repeatedly describes elective abortion, and other controversial reproductive medical procedures and services as “standard.”  The term “standard,” as used in the document, is never defined.  Ideally, a care “standard” would involve a balanced and thorough consideration of the existing medical literature for the effect on the patient’s health and well being, both in the short term and in the long term.  There is scant evidence regarding the outcomes of elective abortion, other than its decided effectiveness at ending a pregnancy.  In general, the long term safety of abortion, and its “benefit” for women, has been either assumed, or accepted on the basis of inadequate follow-up studies.   

 

On the contrary, there are poor reproductive and other health outcomes associated with elective abortion in methodologically sound scientific studies. The data from nations with extensive computer based health registries, where linkage with subsequent health outcomes is a practical reality, show that elective abortion has significant adverse association with subsequent preterm birth,[1] depression,[2] suicide,[3] placenta previa,[4] and breast cancer.[5]  (“Although it remains uncertain whether elective abortion increases subsequent breast cancer, it is clear that a decision to abort and delay pregnancy culminates in a loss of protection with the net effect being an increased risk.”)[4]

 

While there may be conflicting data with regard to these issues, ACOG documents have summarily denied the significance of any literature demonstrating an association. We are aware of no current ACOG educational materials providing balance to this extreme position.     

 

In this regard, we also find the Opinion statement, “Health care providers must impart accurate and unbiased information so that patients can make informed decisions about their health care,” to be at odds with the actual practice of informed consent in elective abortion. The College has allowed the development of a procedure (elective abortion) in its specialty area for which record keeping is inadequate and meaningful tracking of complications is virtually impossible.  There is a relative absence of data collected on abortion and subsequent health status in the United States.  ACOG has colluded in this state of affairs by not insisting on adequate record keeping and reporting for this procedure.   Since accurate risk and complication rates are unavailable, it is vacuous to make reference to “accurate and unbiased information” for making “informed” decisions.

 

Further, in most instances, the abortion practitioner is not responsible to care for “complications” of his or her work, and often may not even be aware that a complication has occurred.  Rather, the emergency room physician, or the obstetrician/gynecologist on call for the emergency department, inherits untoward fallout of abortion. Therefore the physician performing the procedure cannot even accurately reference his or her own experience with regard to complications in informed consent conversations. This is the only instance in American medicine where the operating physician is not the primary physician responsible for the initial oversight of complications of their surgical procedure. Perhaps the ACOG Committee on Ethics should address the strange ethics of this “prevailing standard” of reproductive health service.

 

Dr. Allan Sawyer, who is an AAPLOG member and current Chairman of the ACOG Committee on Coding and Nomenclature, as well as chairman of a hospital ethics committee, has stated in a prior letter to ACOG, “It is a foundational principle of ethics that autonomy must be balanced by the other principles of ethics.  Any one principle of ethics cannot trump all of the others, otherwise there is distortion of truth and the dominant principle ends up skewing the analysis.  The end result often is anything but ethical.  ACOG’s Committee Opinion #385 is an excellent example of the collapse of ethical decision-making when patient autonomy is allowed to dominate over every other principle of ethics. This is not so much an ethics committee opinion as it is a document that promotes the right-to-abortion-on-demand stance of ACOG.”[6]   Dr. Sawyer’s comments accurately reflect AAPLOG’s position on this issue.

 

The idea that physicians are obligated to provide or refer for elective abortion services simply on the basis of “patient request” is antithetical to the practice of modern medicine.   It is to make patient autonomy rule over physician conscience.  It is to make the physician the corner vendor.  A more balanced approach would be to accept that where opinions vary, the patient is free to seek a second opinion, but not to impose her will on the attending physician.

 

The Ethics Committee directive that those who oppose elective abortion on conscience grounds should locate their practice in proximity to an abortionist for patient convenience is patently absurd.  Quite apart from our conscience convictions, this is a completely unrealistic idea.  Conformity with this recommendation would result in large swathes of the United States being without any obstetric or gynecologic care (the large majority of abortion clinics are located in the inner city).  

 

The Committee Opinion informs us that conscience based refusals should be evaluated on the basis of their potential for discrimination.  For years a glaring example of systematic discrimination has been implicitly accepted within the current provision of abortion services nationwide.  Year after year, African-American women have their unborn children aborted at a per capita rate three times that of Caucasian women. There has never been a protest from ACOG against this extreme disproportion in the actual distribution of abortion services.  What would the Ethics Committee advise to rectify this inequity?  Should the abortion rate be increased for Caucasian women, or should the abortion rate be decreased for African-American women, in order to meet the standards of justice and equitable distribution of reproductive health services?   

 

Finally, it seems that the Ethics Committee does not understand the strength and depth of a conscience conviction against the elective, deliberate taking of an unborn human life. This is not a negotiable issue for those who hold this conviction.  The United States Supreme Court allowed elective abortion to be a legal right.  The U.S. Supreme Court is not an infallible moral guide for a person’s   conscience, as evidenced by a previous similar egregious ruling.[7]

 

For these reasons, we, the AAPLOG board of directors, find this Committee Opinion to be neither scientifically nor ethically sound. We strongly urge that Committee Opinion #385 be rescinded at the earliest opportunity. 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Joseph L. DeCook, MD, FACOG, Vice-President, AAPLOG, for the Executive Committee and the Board of AAPLOG