Medical Associations Say Supreme Court Ruling Will Exacerbate Inequities
Medical associations and public health experts slammed the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had protected a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion, saying it would exacerbate maternal mortality and health inequities.
As a result of the ruling, about half of states are expected to move immediately to limit women’s access to safe and effective family planning services.
In a statement, Ronald Ackerman, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, said that access to family planning services is an essential component of public health. “Removing access to these services will significantly impact maternal health outcomes and increase maternal deaths in the United States, he wrote. “Importantly, the impact of today’s Supreme Court decision will fall unequally on minority and lower income populations. This will exacerbate further the existing disparities and racial inequities in maternal health outcomes. Women from underserved and lower income communities are less likely to receive reproductive health services, more likely to experience maternal health complications, and experience higher maternal death rates. Prioritizing equal access to family planning services has been essential to public health efforts for more than 50 years.”
Ackerman called the ruling “a profound setback to public health, because it is an immediate threat to health and health equity for women. Policies that lead to profound health inequities such as this are simply unjust and inconsistent with the principles of public and population health that guide our work.” The Northwestern University Institute for Public Health and Medicine stands by all women, whose rights and health have been seriously threatened by today’s ruling.
Sterling N. Ransone, Jr., M.D., president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, issued a statement saying that the AAFP is disappointed and disheartened by the Supreme Court’s decision. “This decision negatively impacts our practices and our patients by undermining the patient-physician relationship and potentially criminalizing evidence-based medical care. Further, the decision to uphold Dobbs v. Mississippi will limit access to healthcare for patients across the United States.”
Ransone noted that “allowing each state to pass their own laws regarding access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion services and contraception, exacerbates inequities in the healthcare system. These laws disproportionately affect those patients who are in underrepresented groups and underserved areas, which already puts them at increased risk of maternal death. Decreased availability of care and increased travel and associated expenses will make seeking healthcare challenging for many and prohibitive for some.”
The AAFP strongly urges state legislators to protect patients and their physicians and to enact laws that protect access and strike down any laws that jeopardize care. Laws and mandates that restrict or create undue burdens in accessing healthcare services endanger patients and put those who provide medical care—or even offer evidence-based information—at great risk.
Moira Szilagyi, M.D., Ph.D., president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued a statement saying the decision “carries grave consequences for our adolescent patients, who already face many more barriers than adults in accessing comprehensive reproductive healthcare services and abortion care.”
She said the AAP reaffirms its longstanding policy supporting adolescents’ right to access comprehensive, evidence-based reproductive healthcare services, including abortion. “Today’s ruling means that in many places in the United States, this evidence-based care will be difficult or impossible to access, threatening the health and safety of our patients and jeopardizing the patient-physician relationship.”
A statement by Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., president of the American Medical Association, said that the AMA is “deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care—representing an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients’ rights to evidence-based reproductive health services. States that end legal abortion will not end abortion—they will end safe abortion, risking devastating consequences, including patients’ lives.”
“Today’s opinion shifting reproductive health decision-making to lawmakers opens a deep political rift between states over access to reproductive health services that places sound medical practice and the health of patients at risk,” Resneck said. “State restrictions that intrude on the practice of medicine and interfere with the patient-physician relationship leave millions with little or no access to reproductive health services while criminalizing medical care.
“Access to legal reproductive care will be limited to those with the sufficient resources, circumstances, and financial means to do so—exacerbating health inequities by placing the heaviest burden on patients from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, rural, and other historically disadvantaged communities who already face numerous structural and systemic barriers to accessing healthcare.”
