Thom Tillis: I'm not a doctor, but I play one in the legislature

NC Speaker-elect Thom Tillis has gotten a lot of media coverage lately talking about his plans to reduce abortion when he takes control of the NC House today.

Just to be clear, when he says, “reduce abortions”, he is not talking about reducing unintended pregnancies—the number one reason why women have abortions in the first place. He’s definitely not talking about greater access to birth control, comprehensive sex education or preventive healthcare in general—all proven ways of reducing unwanted pregnancies.

Instead, Speaker-elect Tillis says he’s going to reduce abortions through “informed consent,” which strikes me as odd.

Most health providers I know view “informed consent” as an ethical way of providing patients with unbiased, non-directive information so that the patient can make her own choice about a particular medical procedure.

If Speaker-elect Tillis and his new majority think they are going to reduce abortion through informed consent then perhaps they are talking about a different kind of “informed consent” than what most of us receive when we go to see our doctor.

Does their “informed consent” mandate what doctors say to their patients?

Does their “informed consent” suggest that doctors should ignore the individual in front of them—her history, her story, her concerns and her questions—to instead focus on delivering a litany of state-mandated information?

What happens if a woman doesn’t want to listen to what politicians want her to hear? Let’s face it, politicians would never ask a man to wait 24 hours before having a medical procedure or listen to state-scripted counseling when he goes to see a doctor.

Real informed consent is not a one way street—a basic tenet of ethical informed consent is that the patient is given the information she needs or wants in order to make a personal medical decision. It’s her informed consent we seek after all.

Does the new majority’s “informed consent” assume that women make reproductive health decisions blithely without thinking seriously about the consequences?

I wonder if anyone in North Carolina’s new legislative majority has spent time in a medical setting that provides compassionate abortion care? I wonder if anyone in the new majority has thought about what it would feel like to see a doctor whose counseling has been scripted by the politicians.

Before jumping to conclusions and asking women and doctors to jump through governmental hoops, wouldn’t it be wise to first find out about the information doctors already provide women day in and day out.