A Doctor Is Making Her Patients Sign This Scathing "Consent Form"

Before a medical student becomes a doctor, they have to take an oath promising to protect their patients as best she can and work on their behalf throughout her career. In this political climate, though, laws sometimes unfortunately get in the way of that. That's why this Texas doctor's abortion consent form putting anti-choice legislators in their place is so important.

According to Femalista, the consent form was given to a patient seeking a termination for her to sign. The patient went on to successfully terminate the pregnancy and later posted the image to Reddit, Femalista writes.

"The Texas legislature, in its infinite wisdom, believes that neither you nor I are intelligent enough to carry on a conversation about how you might make an informed decision about how best to handle your current pregnancy," the doctor begins. The consent form then goes on to describe what the Texas legislature in fact requires of all abortion doctors and patients, specifically an ultrasound that the patient must see, hear, and then hear all about from the doctor.

By inserting themselves into our conversation, they have almost certainly violated our first amendment rights to free speech and intruded into the time-honored relationship you and I share at this critical time in our lives.

The doctor, in accordance with that age-old oaths that doctors take, clearly objects to women being forced to hear unnecessary information when making what is such a difficult decision already — and this consent form makes it known.

Doctors making their feelings known about this subject is extremely important in this struggle, because anti-choice legislators usually pass their laws by claiming that they are helping women. However, laws blocking women's access to abortion help women in exactly zero ways — and in fact they actively harm the women who can't get safe abortions and who then turn to the option of unsafe ones. While there are always some unfortunate exceptions, the medical profession should be free of ideology and judgement — a viewpoint that this doctor is wholeheartedly and publicly embracing.

What the doctor recognizes but the legislators don't is that women in this position are often in an extremely difficult and painful situation already. No one gets an abortion for fun; abortions, like most medical procedures, are not capricious endeavors entered into at the spur of the moment. And when women are finding their rights to the control of their own bodies attacked at every turn, they sometimes need someone else to stand up for them — and their doctors are the perfect people to do that.

This doctor's consent form is evidence that there's at least someone out there taking that medical oath seriously and applying it to everyone equally. In a perfect world, doctors would just be able to perform their jobs as they see fit from a medical standpoint, and everyone would have equal, easy access to the medical care that they need. This is not a perfect world, though, so it's wonderful that there's at least one doctor out there pulling way more weight than should be necessary.