How does the ethics of abortion research change in a growingly dangerous climate for those who are pregnant? As patients continue to experience restrictions regarding their reproductive healthcare and access to abortion, the balance between individual risks of participation and social benefit of research may change. This presentation uses a case study of previous risky research to explore how contemporary standards of research integrity may prove inadequate for the challenges of abortion research post-Dobbs.
Despite safety concerns and lack of evidence, several states have recently passed legislation mandating that physicians include the prospect of “abortion reversal” in their pre-abortion counseling. Prompted by this legislation and the risks it posed to pregnant patients, researchers in 2019 conducted a RCT to test the safety and efficacy of the controversial practice. The study was stopped early due to safety concerns but it was politically useful nonetheless for litigation purposes against restrictive legislation. Despite the high risks, we argue the study was ethically permissible but not due to standard ethical accounts of research equipoise.
In examining this case, we explore the ethics of conducting research of sub-optimal interventions in the context of social injustice. Others have defended the ethical permissibility of researching less-than-standard of care medical and social interventions due to resource scarcity, we aim to expand this discussion. Research of sub-optimal care can have social value even when barriers to access of evidence-based measures are not due to their cost, but due to the political climate in which patients must make medical choices.
Katherine Rivlin – Associate Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, University fo Chicago Medicine
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