“Critics of abortion-specific informed consent laws accuse politicians of intentionally manipulating the principle of informed consent—which is meant to promote patients’ safety and autonomy—in order to carry out their own ideological agendas. “The whole point of informed consent is to provide medically accurate information and then to work with the patient to come up with a treatment plan that’s agreeable to them,” says Dr. Horvath-Cosper, who now works as a reproductive health advocacy fellow atPhysicians for Reproductive Health. “If we’re having to give people incorrect information and then saying, ‘Well, you know, the state requires me to say this. It’s not actually true,’ it undermines the patients’ confidence in us as providers.”
“I think that certainly the doctor–patient relationship is based on trust—and how does a patient trust us if we’re giving them false information because we have to?” she asks.”