Obstetrics seems to be particularly resistant to making evidence-based changes to common practice, perhaps because of the emotional climate surrounding pregnant women and babies.
An argument that the concept of judicious dissent can resolve the debate over a physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to provide lawful services.
An argument that an individual physician’s conscience-based decision not to offer specific, lawful medical services should not restrict patients’ access to those services.
With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
Posthumous fatherhood and postmenopausal motherhood raise a multitude of legal, ethical, and social concerns that the law and regulatory agencies have not been able to adequately address to date.