Beneath the Sword of Damocles: Moral Obligations of Physicians in a Post-Dobbs Landscape

A growing web of state laws restricts access to abortion. In most cases in which terminating a pregnancy is clinically indicated but state law imposes restrictions on doing so, it is morally permissible and praiseworthy for doctors to break the law. In a subset of such cases, doctors are morally obligated to do so. Health care institutions, in turn, have an ethical duty to provide practical support for clinicians who are working to resolve the dilemmas of providing reproductive health care in the face of such laws