LD 771 would force doctors to promote junk science relating to so-called “abortion reversals," and create new criminal penalties.
The bill would force healthcare providers to communicate false and misleading information to their patients, give a government-sanctioned pamphlet encouraging them to partake in an experimental and unproven treatment that runs counter to the patients’ best interests, and violate the doctor’s ethical obligations as medical providers. So-called abortion reversals are wholly unsupported by reliable scientific evidence and have been rejected by the field’s trusted medical authorities, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
This legislation would also create new criminal penalties relating to abortion care. Wherever possible, the legislature should remove criminal penalties from our statutes that differentiate abortion care from other medical care. Making crimes specific to abortion but not other medical procedures stigmatizes this healthcare. Additionally, imposing criminal penalties generally does not deter behavior, but instead pushes the criminalized actions underground and out of sight, making them more dangerous and harder to regulate.
