Legal for Doctors to lie to their female patients...

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  • castadiva
    castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
    Right, my apologies for the lengthy delay - last week was absolutely crazy. It appears I was slightly mistaken, in that the Arizona bill protects negligent doctors who "make a mistake" from wrongful birth lawsuits, whereas the proposed Kansas legislation explicitly protects doctors who withold information in the belief that sharing that information would lead to the patient seeking to terminate the pregnancy. It would appear that similar laws already exist, or are being considered in numerous other states. This is a link to a brief article by a doctor whose comments on the ethical issues raised by these laws - an interesting, clear-headed read. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/11-2

    The crucial thing to remember in the case of all of these alarming laws (heard the one about the Georgian senator who wants women forced to carry foetuses dead in the womb to term or 'natural' labour, regardless of the risk to maternal or sibling, in the case of multiple pregnancies, life?!), is that it's not just precisely what is said in the laws that must be considered, but how these laws may be interpreted and applied. For eample, the misapplication of laws such as Alabama's "Chemical Endangerment" laws, designed to protect children whose parents 'cooked' methamphetamines at home, but being used in numerous cases to criminalise miscarriage and bring prosecutions against women who have lost babies, on the basis of allegations of drug use or exposure. Miscarriage is medically inexplicable in many cases, drug use does not automatically lead to miscarriage in any case, and these laws were not designed for this purpose, but have been interpreted to fit a specific agenda. Another interesting read on a similar theme : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/16/utah-miscarriage-bill-abortion

    And finally, as promised (I'm really, REALLY sorry about the wait!), links to the Arizona bill: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1359s.htm - the one that protects doctors who "accidentally neglect" to inform patients.
    and the Kansas proposed bill: http://kslegislature.org/li/b2011_12/measures/documents/hb2598_00_0000.pdf
    See section 10a and b specifically, on page 3 and the top of pg 4(of 68!!) - and note the clever wording about "preserving the life of the individual" in section b. My (possibly incorrect - I need more coffee) interpretation of that section is that you can still sue if a doctor doesn't tell you about something that could have been 'fixed' in utero (as long as doing so preserved the life of the foetus) or because the mother dies, if there is already an established precedent for doing so, but not for medical damage/injury to the mother or for the birth of a medically-impaired child if the omission was made in the interests of preserving the unborn life. This article from the Huffington Post seems to support that interpretation, and discusses othe provisions in the bill as well: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/kansas-anti-abortion-bill_n_1258185.html
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