Petition for the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Board to Release a Position Statement Supporting Reproductive Rights and Develop an Action Plan to Leverage the Expertise of its Membership

As clinical informaticists, we are deeply concerned by the special message released by AMIA's Leadership. This special message, which was distributed to all AMIA members, did not convey sufficient prioritization of the pressing issues raised by the Supreme’s court ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The message failed to speak to the harmful implications on women’s health and the central role of informatics in supporting reproductive healthcare.

Please join us in calling on AMIA to release a formal position statement aligned with the values of healthcare professionals who recognize abortion and other reproductive care as decisions to be made by patients and their families with their clinician. A myriad of professional medical societies, all of which have diverse memberships with wide ranging views, have released unequivocal statements of support for reproductive healthcare, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others. These statements are consistent with decades of research on reproductive healthcare and its impacts on the wellbeing of women.

We also call on AMIA to prioritize these issues by developing an action plan detailing how AMIA will leverage the expertise of its membership to ensure that the electronic health record and digital health tools support the provision of the full range of women’s health care while protecting the privacy of our patients and the safety of our clinicians and allied health professionals.

As a professional society representing physicians, nurses, and other clinicians, data scientists, and technical leaders in health care, we believe AMIA must use its resources and expertise to guide the many decisions that lie ahead related to how informatics tools can support reproductive rights of women and live up to the standards we hold as clinicians and allied professionals in the United States.