Standards of Medical Judgment as a Vehicle for State Encroachment on the Practice of Medicine

In their article Objective Standards of Medical Judgment: A Myth of Abortion Law , Graber et al. explore the different legal standards for evaluating if a physician properly offered abortion care under a medical exception to states’ abortion restrictions. While this piece focuses tightly on the use of legal standards to limit access to abortion care, it should be understood in the broader context of a legal and political environment that is increasingly shifting the locus of medical decision-making power from the medical profession to state actors. We agree with Graber et al. that physicians should use their voices to speak out and educate the community on the medical decision-making process. But we are concerned that some state and legal actors are intentionally looking to improperly encroach upon the practice of medicine.