"After then-governor Ronald Reagan signed California’s 1967 abortion act, his daughter said, he began to regret it when he learned that 'psychiatrists were diagnosing unwed mothers-to-be with suicidal tendencies after five-minute assessments so that they could get abortions.' Thirty years ago, shortly after the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe’s central holding by a single vote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum speculated that returning to restrictive abortion laws 'will confront psychiatrists with dilemmas from which there is no clear escape.' Recently I asked Dr. Appelbaum to update his prediction. 'Given understandable sympathy for a woman who does not want, and may not be able to care for, a baby, and lacks other options, psychiatrists will be under intense pressure to make such judgments,' he told me. Mental health exceptions will be one of the only ways of gaining access to abortion in some states. This means that my profession will surely assume the troubled role of gatekeeper once more, feeling pressured by a woman’s circumstances, and often by their own conscience, to label her as disturbed when in reality she is sane."
From "The ‘Open Secret’ on Getting a Safe Abortion Before Roe v. Wade" by psychiatry professor Sally L. Satel (NYT).
That is, it's rather clear that if the state makes psychiatrists into abortion gatekeepers, they will not exercise their power according to professional ethics. That offers a strong foundation to lawmakers who oppose a mental health exception. It's also a good foundation for those who want to permit access to abortion without any need to pass through gates that are only a restriction for those who restrict themselves to honesty.
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