E. Informed Medical Consent: a Doctor's legal duty to Protect Health Although your author is NOT a lawyer, it is well known that in Canada and the United States a medical doctor has a legal duty to pro- tect a patient's health. This means that even if a patient requests or demands a treatment that the doctor knows (or ought to know) is not in the patient's best interests, the doctor is legally required NOT to provide the treatment. Since elective induced abortions have raised risks of breast cancer, suicide, and substance abuse, virtually all U.S. and Canadian induced abortions are ILLEGAL, since these risks mean that the procedure is not in the patient's best interests. Thus, even before considering the APB risk, this elective procedure is illegal!! The APB risk simply compounds the illegality. In the very short term of twelve months, is not an elective induced abortion much safer for the mom than a term birth? No, this myth was shattered in 1997 by a study published in the top Scandinavian journal in the field of obstet- rics and gynecology.34. It reported that Finnish women who had abor- tions had 3.5 (three and one half) times the risk of dying from ALL CAUSES of death compared to women who carried to term, in the twelve months 'after the end of pregnancy'. No one has refuted this study. Please note that so-called 'maternal mortality' is NOT the same as 'all-cause' mortality, since 'maternal mortality' excludes the follow- ing causes of death: 1. accidents (including car/truck accidents) 2. suicide 3. homicide 4. cancer In the 1997 Finnish study, women who had induced abortions had 6.46 times the risk of dying via suicide and four (4) times the risk of dying in accidents compared to women who carried to term.34 Accidents are number one killer of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in the United States. Previous U.S. studies that compared mortality of women who induced aborted and women who carried to term, used 'maternal mortality', NOT the all inclusive 'all-cause mortality'! These U.S. studies simply presumed, with no proof, that how a pregnancy ended, had virtually no effect on the risk of dying via accidents, suicide, homicide, cancer, etc. Good medical science should not rely on mere presumptions. The 1997 study of Finnish women shatters the presump- tions of some U.S. researchers.34 copyright Brent Rooney ( [email protected] )