2026/01/01 by Abraham Graber, Mack Peterson, Ethan Detrick
Health Professions · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Ethics in medical practice #Legal Systems and Judicial Processes #Reproductive Health and Contraception
paper · doi:10.1017/jme.2025.10208
openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/01/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
, abortion regulation is left entirely to the states. Laws that restrict access to abortion generally allow for exceptions when determined necessary for the life or safety of the pregnant patient. Some states, e.g., Ohio, use a "subjective" legal standard when determining whether an abortion is medically necessary. Other states, e.g., Texas, rely on an "objective" legal standard, whereby the necessity of an abortion is not determined by any particular physician's judgments, but rather by the judgment of a hypothetical "reasonable physician." Though objective legal standards are widespread in American jurisprudence, they are a poor fit for clinical judgments about the medical necessity of abortion. On the contemporary model of clinical decision-making, medical judgment is irremediably subjective. In addition to being responsive to patient values and medical evidence, medical judgment is, and should be, informed by physician values. Because Texas abortion regulations rely on an objective standard of judgment that fails to correspond to a medically meaningful category, they fail to provide adequate guidance to physicians regarding the circumstances under which abortion is legally protected.