If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.
When deciding whether a pregnant woman will take antidepressants that pose a slight risk to the fetus, the patient and doctor must each make value-based determinations about whether absolute protection of the fetus is more important than preventing the mother’s probable suffering.
Amanda Fakih, MHSA and Kayte Spector-Bagdady, JD, MBE
Testing everyone for everything identifies more fetal conditions, but confusion persists about whether clinicians should leave screening decisions to patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2019;21(10):E858-864. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.858.
Professor Rebecca Feinberg joins Health By Law to discuss the Alabama Supreme Court decision in LePage v Center for Reproductive Medicine and the legal, clinical, and ethical implications of embryonic personhood.
Direct sterilization by means of tubal ligation is morally unacceptable in Catholic bioethics but other procedures that result in indirect sterilization may be acceptable under certain conditions.
Nonlegal, judicial, and statutory courses of action are available to patient surrogates and physicians who cannot agree on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.
Physicians must respond responsibly and ethically when a patient who has an exercise addiction requests unnecessary diagnostic tests to support her unhealthy lifestyle.
Physicians must respond responsibly and ethically when a patient who has an exercise addiction requests unnecessary diagnostic tests to support her unhealthy lifestyle.