ABSTRACT
The debate over physician responsibility for abortion increasingly took place outside the profession during the 1950s and 1960s as the inconsistencies in state laws prohibiting it were challenged. Many physicians believe that abortions should be done only for medical reasons and that only they are qualified to determine when these reasons exist. In order to comply with the new laws and court decisions, however, it will be necessary for physicians to realize that abortion has become a predominately social as well as medical responsibility. At the June 1967 meeting of the American Medical Association in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Committee on Human Reproduction submitted a detailed report and policy recommendation on therapeutic abortion that was actually a response to and a modification of the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute. The fact that most people have an opinion about abortion demonstrates how the question of its rightness or wrongness pervades the collective conscience of America.
