Expository Essay on Legal Issues in Healthcare

Introduction

Medication abortion is a legal medical procedure that is provided in various across the USA. The Food and Drug Administration Agency (FDA) in the USA provides guidelines, for instance, dosage for doctors to use such as RU-486 when inducing abortion. A guideline in this context includes the drug to be used for pregnancy cases in the first trimester meaning above this period, it should be considered a crime.

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The Oklahoma legislation does not restrict the use of medical abortion services but requires the practitioners to follow the FDA rules. However, the author believes that the doctrine guiding abortion practices is ambiguous and may affect the limits where the judges may consider abortion acceptable or impermissible. Moreover, the current FDA-approved medicines for abortion are only effective within 90 days hence, when utilized above that period it is considered a crime. This situation infringes women's right to privacy and control of their reproductive health. All these efforts are done in the name of keeping women safe.

Additionally, science and technology have improved but the legislation is still limiting which is a disturbing situation for both the patients and doctors. Recently at least 17 states have banned the use of video conferencing to prescribe abortion pills, despite this technology being used widely in the healthcare field. In this process, the nurse examines the pregnant person using an ultrasound then via video the doctor is able to determine the dosage. This ban has been issued to protect women from the harmful effects of abortion. Also, instead of FDA-approved 600mg of Mifeprex, the physicians have realized that 200mg is effective and instead of proposing up to 49 days it can be relied on to terminate up to 62 days of pregnancy. However, the law has not been reviewed to incorporate these advancements, hence reflecting the claim that it aims to protect women, but rather intrude on their privacy and deny them the chance to control their reproductive health.

Therefore, to this extent, it could be concluded that the law evolves too slow. For instance, as shown above, the effectiveness of the 200mg of Mifeprex in terminating 62 days of pregnancy has been consistent since 13 years ago (Greenhouse para 12). The technique is used in Asia, Europe, the USA, and other parts of the world. However, the Supreme Court guided by the FDA is still considering 600mg to be effective for 45 days of pregnancy which is extremely outdated. Therefore, as part of professionalism at work, most doctors consider the 600mg dose as bad medicine and would refuse to use it in a procedure.

Additionally, before judges on the Supreme Court rule on a case, there are procedures that lead to a slow evolution of the law. In most cases, the Supreme Court ruling is used as a precedent for other lower courses to rule on similar cases. Hence, when a ruling is delayed it affects the subsequent cases. Moreover, it takes around four justices at the Supreme Court to agree on an issue before a ruling is passed on a case especially those from the lower courts of law. For instance, in the cline vs Oklahoma coalition of reproductive justice case which was given little attention, the justices deferred debating on the case indefinitely until they receive further details from the state court. Such protocol leads to years and years of delayed ruling on cases meant to be precedent for similar cases, which affects the evolution of the law.

Work Cited

Greenhouse Linda. "The Next Abortion Case Is Here." The New York Times. (2013). Retrieved from https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/the-next-abortion-case-is-here/