Informed Consent to Abortion
Caterina Milo
Abstract
Abstract Traditionally, the abortion debate has focused on the status of the fetus and the decisions available to pregnant women in isolation. More recently, a progressive call to de-medicalise, meaning to reduce the involvement of healthcare professionals in abortion processes, has also been emerging and been implemented in law and policy. This monograph addresses particularly the phenomenon of de-medicalisation and brings forth a different and novel narrative. It claims that it is time to focus on the decision-making process and to call for a process of revised, instead of reduced, medicalisation. It is hence claimed that the abortion debate has neglected the crucial component of the decision-making process, particularly of patients’ right to informed consent (IC). The latter (IC), it is argued, is built not only on patient’s autonomy alone, but also on medical partnership. In this sense, the key general contribution of this work stands in the proposition that IC is the tool that can foster bridges of dialogue within the doctor-patient relationship in the abortion context. From this it follows that it is crucial to better work on the doctor-patient dynamics, since this is the core place where IC should unfold. As a result, focusing primarily on England and Wales while also suggesting broader international examples, legal and policy changes are proposed to foster a process of revised medicalisation that values and safeguards both patients’ and doctors’ voices and expertise.