Hanni Stoklosa, MD, MPH, Marti MacGibbon, CADC-II, ACRPS, and Joseph Stoklosa, MD
Clinicians diagnosing and treating potentially trafficked patients with co-occurring addiction and mental illness should guard against expressing negative biases.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(1):23-24. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.1.ecas3-1701.
When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
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.
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.