If a physician is forced to grapple with whether a patient meets the legal criteria for receiving an abortion, they may also miss opportunities to prevent their condition from getting worse, says Dr. Louise Perkins King, an ob-gyn and director of reproductive bioethics at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. Some conditions require quick decisions in order to prevent devastating complications. There’s not always time to run medical decisions by legal departments. “The problem with these laws is that they don’t allow us to act,” King says, “to prevent us from getting to the point when it’s clear someone’s life is at stake.”
Laws that permit abortions in cases where the fetus has a severe genetic defect will also be difficult to navigate, King says.