Abortion and Medical Ethics

Despite the Supreme Court decision in 1973, Roe v. Wade, making abortion legally available without impedi ment during the first two trimesters of pregnancy, neither the legal nor ethical problems of abortion have been solved. Congressional opposition to federal financial support of abor tion, as well as a wide disparity in availability of abortion, indicates the still unsettled state of public policy on the issue. In medical ethics, a number of problems have surfaced in the past few years, which together form a complex set of both moral and legal issues. Fetal research, on the one hand, and the prospect of in vitro fertilization, on the other, both point to issues which recent Supreme Court decisions have not clarified. The rapid development of amniocentesis as a major tool of prenatal diagnosis highlights some of the new dilem mas. If the Supreme Court decision is read literally, there would appear to be no grounds for a physician to refuse to perform an abortion except for a clear threat to a woman's health from the abortion itself. Yet many, and perhaps most, physicians appear morally opposed to using abortion for sex selection or in those cases where simple postnatal treatment is available to correct a genetic defect. What are the rights of physicians in such cases and what, if any, are the limits on the rights of women to have abortions? Lurking in the back ground is the growing power of medicine to push back the time of viability of an infant earlier and earlier. Both new legal and ethical problems are bound to result. Abortion re mains as deeply complex a moral issue as ever.