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Study: what drives doctors to perform abortions?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Exercise of conscience in medical practice is usually defined as refusing to provide controversial services, such as abortion.
But in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from the University of Michigan challenge that definition and say that doctors who terminate pregnancies can be called conscientious and conscientious.
Lisa Harris, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan State University, points out that there is historical and contemporary evidence that conscience and consciousness are the primary motivators that lead doctors to perform abortions.
The doctor refers to the sociological research of Carol Joffe, who studied what pushes qualified doctors to perform abortions illegally, risking not only the loss of their medical license and their many years of medical practice, but also their own freedom. The sociologist's research is based on the so-called Roe v. Wade case - the historic decision of the US Supreme Court regarding the legality of abortion. This decision became one of the most controversial and politically important in the history of the States.
The court ruled that a woman has the right to an abortion until the fetus in her womb becomes viable – in this context, autonomy is meant, “the ability to exist outside the mother’s body, including with obligatory medical support.”
"Doctors performed illegal abortions because they saw women die trying to abort unwanted pregnancies on their own or putting themselves in the hands of charlatans," Harris writes.
The doctor says that modern abortions are motivated by the conscientiousness of doctors: “Although in the modern world, gynecologists who perform abortions do not break the law, they still have something to lose. Many people perceive them as murderers, forcing them to feel this shameful stigma. Discredit from colleagues, persecution and threats - this is what doctors who save thousands of women from certain death have to endure. But their deep-rooted beliefs do not allow them to do otherwise and simply watch as people's lives are crippled.”
The author of the study says that American law still protects those doctors who refuse to perform abortions based on their own moral principles, while doctors who perform abortions, also based on their ethical views, are practically deprived of such protection.
Dr. Harris notes that abortion opponents believe that doctors who perform abortions are guided primarily by material gain rather than their own conscience. She disagrees with this assertion, but does not deny that it is indeed important to distinguish doctors' moral motivations from any other.
"It is important that the refusal to perform an abortion be based on genuine moral motivations, not on the physician's political motivations, or on a misperception of medical evidence, or on a combination of other irrelevant factors," the author writes.
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