Since abortion is an elective procedure, an abortion practitioner's personal opinion that one or another risk is not yet firmly established, or has not yet been adequately measured, does not relieve him of the responsibility to disclose to the patient that members of the medical community are concerned about this disputed risk. Since it is the patient's right to weigh the evidence for or against a contested risk or complication, candidates for elective abortion are entitled to full disclosure of all statistically validated risks, and may even be entitled to information about disputed or even "theoretical" risks, such as would be the case with experimental drugs. . . .
If a negative outcome were a certainty, it would not be called a risk. A physician's lack of certainty that an adverse effect is likely or causally relted to an elective procedure should not be the basis for depriving patients of the opportunity to weigh this information for themselves. . . .
The relevant question here is at what point do patients, especially those considering purely elective surgery, have a right to consider the evidence for or against a risk or benefit associated with the treatment?