Punishing women who use drugs during pregnancy deters them from seeking prenatal care and entering drug treatment programs, and the relevant policies may unfairly target poor or minority women.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.