Importance and Necessity of Training the Medical Team Regarding Religious-moral Doctrines Related to Abortion, A Narrative Review

Abstract

Background: Treatment team’s lack of knowledge about legal-religious doctrines of abortion can put mothers’ health at great risk. Objective: Importance and necessity of training the medical team regarding religious-moral doctrines related to abortion. Data Sources: The moral abortion studies conducted by Iranian authors between 2000 and 2018 can be found at SID, Iran Medex, PubMed, Google Scholar, and CINAHL search engines. In this review study, 20 out of 146 studies on legal and jurisprudence issues of various aspects of abortion were reviewed. Methods: The present study is a review of published evidence about knowledge and the attitudes of gynecologists, midwives, medical and midwifery students, and the views of senior planners on legal and abortion laws and pertinent issues of legal and religious education. Results: The study population had moderate knowledge about the laws and regulations of moral abortion (15.4-53.3%) and negative attitude towards criminal abortions (78.3%). Besides, 64.7% of the participants agreed about abortion in unwanted pregnancies. Moreover, the majority of executive managers considered abortion to be legal in case if mother or fetus’s life was in danger. However, a small number of participants agreed about abortion due to sexual harassment, unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy without proper interval between babies, unmarried pregnancies, and pregnancy out of temporary marriage. Conclusion: Medical team’s lack of spiritual awareness and positive attitude towards criminal abortion can increase the risk of hidden abortions. Thus, an increase in medical team’s knowledge about legal, moral, and religious aspects of abortion and penalties for criminal abortion should be considered as a health-treatment priority.