Legislative Interference with Patient Care, Medical Decisions, and the Patient-Physician Relationship

The patient-physician relationship is essential to the provision of safe, patient-centered medical care and should be protected from unnecessary governmental intrusion. Government serves a valuable role in protecting public health and safety, providing essential health services, and making sure that evidence-based and scientifically sound care is available to the public. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) supports this proper role of government. Laws and regulations that veer from these functions and unduly interfere with patient-physician relationships are not appropriate. Absent a substantial, evidence-based and validated public health justification, government should not interfere with individual patient-physician encounters. Physicians should be empowered to educate their patients and the public about the dangers of governmental interference with essential health care and the importance of participation in the electoral process.

Efforts to legislate and/or mandate elements of patient care and counseling can impact the trust between a patient and their physician. Ob-gyns are experts in their field and laws should not interfere with their ability, together with their patients, to determine appropriate treatment options and have open, honest, and confidential communications. Nor should laws interfere with the patient’s right to be counseled and treated by a physician according to the best currently available medical evidence and the physician’s professional medical judgment. ACOG opposes any governmental interference that compromises honest communication between patients and their physicians or causes a physician to compromise their medical judgment when caring for patients. 

ACOG opposes laws that ban or criminalize evidence-based care, that rely on medically unsupported theories and misinformation, that require physicians to give, or withhold, specific information when counseling patients, or that mandate which tests, procedures, treatment alternatives or medicines physicians can perform, prescribe, or administer. Laws limiting access to and criminalizing evidence-based care including abortion, contraception, fertility care and treatments including in vitro fertilization, and gender affirming care are dangerous for physicians and patients alike. Additional examples of problematic interference include prohibiting physicians from speaking to their patients about firearms and gun safety, mandating content of patient-physician conversations, mandating outdated treatment protocols for abortion care and miscarriage management, harmful data reporting or retention policies, and legislating medically unnecessary administrative burdens.

Legislative interference affects all physicians, not just ob-gyns.¹ Singling out medical procedures, restricting current well-established medical practices and distorting scientific facts, and dictating physician practice sets a dangerous precedent. Even if a law or regulation is generally consistent with the clinical standard of care at the time of enactment, it may become outdated as science progresses.

Legislative interference threatens the future of the physician workforce, causing moral injury, contributing to burnout, accelerating early retirements, and exacerbating physician shortages.²  ACOG urges all physicians to advocate against legislative interference in patient care and for the preservation of the patient-physician relationship.

*ACOG recognizes that inappropriate interference in the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship is not limited to legislation or regulation and opposes this interference wherever it occurs.

References

¹Weinberger SE, Lawrence HC III, Henley DE, Alden ER, Hoyt DB. Legislative interference with the patient-physician relationship. N Engl J Med 2012;367:1557–9. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsb1209858

²Sabbath EL, McKetchnie SM, Arora KS, Buchbinder M. US obstetrician-gynecologists' perceived impacts of post-Dobbs v Jackson state abortion bans. JAMA Netw Open 2024;7:e2352109. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.52109

Approved May 2013
Reaffirmed July 2016
Amended and Reaffirmed July 2019
Revised and Approved February 2025