Government can regulate false speech and professional speech, which bans “gag laws” and compelled speech about laws to restrict abortion, for example. How should health professions share regulatory responsibility with government to prevent true speech about health information from being stifled?
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(11):E1041-1048. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1041.
Jody Steinauer, MD, MAS and Carolyn Sufrin, MD, MA
Legislative policies that require a physician to misrepresent the risks of abortion to patients and to show the patient an ultrasound and those that allow physicians not to provide referral for abortion create a conflict between the physician's obligations to the patient and to the law.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.
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.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.