Abortion

Among the record number of abortion restrictions states have passed in the past five years are laws requiring doctors to give abortion patients information that many obstetricians say is false. According to the report, 12 states force doctors to tell women that their fetus can feel pain, even though evidence is weak that fetuses can feel pain in the first two trimesters, the cutoff for abortions. Other states require doctors to tell patients—falsely, according to ACOG and other doctors’ groups—that abortion negatively impacts their future fertility, that abortion is linked to breast cancer, or that an abortion can be reversed.

Some states also require doctors to perform ultrasounds on abortion-seeking patients and describe what they see.

The report quotes one doctor as saying, “Sometimes I find myself apologizing for what the state requires me to do, saying, ‘You may avert your eyes and cover your ears.’”

These laws impact roughly 40 million women of reproductive age. Statistically, 30 percent of them will seek an abortion by age 45.

Guns

Having a gun in the home is strongly correlated with both suicide and accidental shootings. The report authors say 1.7 million children live in homes with unsafe gun practices. About 7,400 children are hospitalized each year due to gunshot wounds, according to a 2014 study in Pediatrics.

Naturally, many pediatricians ask parents whether they have a gun at home, much as they might ask whether their swimming pool is fenced in. When doctors counsel patients about how to store their guns safely, the patients listen—the majority improve their firearm-storage practices, according to some studies.

In 2011, Florida passed a law—which is now likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court—that severely curtailed doctors’ ability to discuss guns with patients, citing the privacy rights of gun-owners. Fourteen states have introduced similar legislation since then, though none as restrictive as Florida’s have been enacted, the report authors write.

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So what does this all mean?

It would be unfair to say that the lobbyists pushing for these laws actually want Americans to receive inaccurate information from their health-care providers. The proponents of each of these types of laws are acting in their own interests. In the case of fracking, competitive energy companies don’t want to give away their trade secrets. With abortion, pro-lifers truly believe abortion is one of the worst things a woman can do to herself (not to mention her fetus/baby), and pro-life groups are extremely powerful right now.

And Florida’s “docs vs. glocks” law was sparked by a patient, 26-year-old Amber Ullman, who refused to answer a question from her pediatrician about whether she owned a gun. Her frustrated doctor told her to go somewhere else, according to the nonprofit news site The Trace.