Advocacy and the Importance of Supporting Patients Beyond the Examination Room

摘要

I appreciated the essay written by Dr. Diane Horvath-Cosper, "Advocacy and the Importance of Supporting Patients Beyond the Examination Room."1 I also believe her concerns regarding inappropriate government interference into the examination room are agonizingly legitimate and, as she points out, may have the inadvertent consequence of increasing preventable maternal morbidity and mortality. Moreover, she importantly conveys the tragic realness of various clinical scenarios related to pregnancy. In doing so, she emphasizes that atypical pregnancy scenarios do, in fact, occur, and that restrictive abortion policy negatively affects both these women and the physicians who care for them. I commend her efforts to demonstrate the significance and importance of physicians being on the front lines of protecting our patients' reproductive rights.