That said, comparing OB-GYNs who studied to help women who are now being thrust into this dilemma to camp guards who – I cannot emphasize this enough – volunteered to be there with the express and sole purpose of imprisoning and killing marginalized groups such as Jews is not at all comparable and demonstrates an extreme degree of black-and-white thinking.

Many members of the German military were drafted. The SS made up a large portion of camp personnel and was largely a volunteer corps, but had plenty of conscripted members by war’s end. Moreover, most camps were manned by general members of the Wehrmacht who were largely drafted. Short story is that a lot were there involuntarily but still bear the responsibility of complicity.

That is beside the point though, and I want to stress that I am not trying to paint these comparisons as equivalent and am not sure how you reached that conclusion. My point involves the way in which we identify culpability and how we can easily apply it one way in one extreme situation but for some reason are refusing to do so for a less extreme but similar situation. Call it invoking Godwin’s law, but it’s not for nothing that I draw the comparison, because this is just an early stop on the same fascist road. “Just following orders” is a long-understood enabler of fascism and it manifests in more ways than one.

At the end of the day, a mother is dead because a doctor was unwilling to provide the medical care necessary to save her life, and we attribute this to a law that medical professionals are being compelled to obey. I see most people in this thread willing to forgive the terrible things that are happening before our eyes, because the doctor had no choice, right? It’s easier to say that blame rests solely with a small cadre of villains in government and absolve everyone else involved of responsibility.

So the million dollar lawsuit question is, if the restrictive anti-abortion law did not exist, would the doctor have done anything differently? If no, then the malpractice lawsuit coming his way anyways is deserved. But if the answer is yes—if he knew the right thing to do but chose not to do it because he was just following the law—then he should be held responsible for that woman’s death and deserves worse than a mere lawsuit.