Praise for an essay by the AMA on the
disastrous decision by the Supreme Court’s Gang of Six
When I’m excited about what the president of the AMA has to say, it means there really is something to be excited about!
The following “guest essay” by current AMA president Jack Resneck, MD is both astute and accurate, prescient in his ability to see and understand the ongoing massive damage being caused by the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v Wade.
Since the AMA has been reliable “Republican” since it incorporated in 1847, it also tells us that the rejection of Dobb decision is not a partisan liberal-versus-conservative partisan political issue. From a political standpoint, Dobb is profoundly undemocratic in ways that offend Republicans and Democrats, as well as the US Constitution and the fourteenth amendment to the BIll of Rights.
The harm and needless pain and suffering that it is doing to women untenable pregnancies, and with those with an impending miscarriage or fetal anomalies incompatible with life, is unconscionable.
In addition to the direct consequences for the impregnated women is the downstream harm to affected families, which includes children and husbands as well as physicians and other women’s healthcare providers, and the stability of society itself. None of this is justified as defined by the Bill of Rights, it’s not constitutional. In the final frame, it’s undemocratic
So I personally welcome the AMA to weigh in on the side of commonsense., which must always reject discrimination based on gender. This prejudice had almost always been is particularly an issue for the female of the species, as public life has been structured primarily by males for the last 7,000 years.
I for one am glad to welcome the AMA as a partner in a country-wide effort to reverse the Dobb decision and restore autonomy of American citizens to decide for themselves what happens inside their own bodies.
As the single oldest and largest, wealthiest, and most influential lobby for medical doctors and the allopathic practice of medicine in the US, having the AMA on our side is politically important.
Please read and pass it on for others to read.
GUEST ESSAY
“This Could Be One of the Most Brazen Attacks on Americans’ Health Yet”
Dr. Resneck is the president of the American Medical Association.
Husband kneeling at casket of his recently pregnant wife
In their zeal to continue upending abortion access after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, legislators, activists and litigants have pushed increasingly extreme measures that disregard medical science, insert government into the exam room and increase the odds of maternal deaths.
Not satisfied with banning abortion in their home states, some lawmakers are trying to restrict access in other states as well — a chilling attempt to intimidate patients and physicians alike.
Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court faces a decision that lays bare the threat to facts, evidence and the health of America’s patients. The case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. F.D.A. — in which anti-abortion organizations and doctors who have never prescribed the pill mifepristone argue, absurdly, that 23 years ago the F.D.A. did not follow proper protocol in approving it as part of a two-drug regimen for abortion — is one of the most brazen attacks yet against reproductive health.
If the ruling of the lower courts on mifepristone are not reversed entirely, it could also upend the Food and Drug Administration’s drug regulatory process. This would throw our health care system into chaos in ways that extend far beyond the specific fight over mifepristone, a highly effective drug that has been used safely by millions of patients for medication abortions and for miscarriage care for more than two decades.
In seeking to restrict access to abortion across the United States, the plaintiffs in this case have, intentionally or not, seriously jeopardized our nation’s 85-year-old drug regulatory system. We must be cleareyed; upholding any parts of the district court’s dangerous ruling would in all likelihood almost immediately prompt challenges to other longstanding safe and effective F.D.A.-approved drugs that doctors and patients rely on every day.
After three years of politicization fueled by disinformation, this would surely include challenges to many vaccines, including those that reduce the risks of serious illness from Covid-19. We should expect lawsuits against common types of safe and highly effective hormonal birth control, including emergency contraception. Also at risk: drugs used to treat cancer and arthritis that can incidentally affect unexpected pregnancies, drugs to prevent or treat H.I.V., and medications aimed at providing gender-affirming care.
The threat may ultimately include promising drugs and treatments built around stem cell technology to treat Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis or even more common types of chronic disease, such as diabetes. With ever-growing anti-science aggression, disinformation campaigns and vitriol about all types of medical advancements, there is no telling where the court challenges may lead — perhaps even to widely used drugs now sold over the counter to treat pain, allergies or heartburn that happen to have been studied with fetal stem cells.
This would represent a dangerous and reckless step backward for our country. More people would live sicker, suffer more and die younger while the scientifically proven safe and effective drugs they need remain locked away.
We simply cannot be a country where your access to the care you need is determined by the whims of ideologically driven judges and lawmakers without medical or scientific training. {emphasis added} That’s why a dozen of the nation’s leading medical organizations, including the one I head, the American Medical Association, strongly oppose this politically motivated assault on patient and physician autonomy and have filed amicus briefs to make our case.
We cannot allow pseudoscience and speculation to override the substantial weight of scientific evidence from more than 100 studies and millions of patients that confirm the safety and efficacy of a drug or course of treatment.
The legal challenge to mifepristone threatens grave harm to our patients, public health and the shared decision-making at the core of the physician-patient relationship.
But there are even broader implications of this case: the integrity of the long-established F.D.A.-approval process and whether we want science — or ideologues — informing decisions about our individual and collective health.
Continue to Part 3 ~ Background Information of my criticism of the AMA and its sponsorship of the Scope of Practice Partnership (SOPP) since 2006
Additional & Related Resources
NYT’s topics for “Grappling with
life in post-Roe America”
Links to addition stories in the NYT on the reversal of Roe v. Wade
“My life would not have been my own. I would be a prisoner subject to a body’s whims — and not my body’s whims, but the whims of a teenage boy.”
